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    Gateway MX6131 Hardware Upgrades

    Discussion in 'Gateway and eMachines' started by JamesVonU, Nov 14, 2010.

  1. JamesVonU

    JamesVonU Newbie

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    For those who may be interested to know if what hardware upgrades are possible for the Gateway MX6131 notebook, the following is a list of upgrades that I performed at various times to my MX6131

    Bios: Gateway 61.01 02/24/2005 - I can't remember if I updated the bios or not.

    1GB ram upgrade - With the initial purchase of the notebook, I bought a second stick of 512GB ram. The notebook came with 512GB of ram in a single DIMM so there was no wasted ram.

    7200rpm 137GB notebook harddrive - I did not venture with high apacity drives because of possible bios and WinXP limitations. Copied the original partitions in addition to creating two additional NTFS partitions.

    Pentium M (Dothan M735 1.7GB) - Because of the low prices that these are going for on the 'Bay, I decided to take a chance on one of these. Luckily after an easy install, the bios recognize the Pentium M chip and Win XP booted up with no problem. The notebook runs noticeably faster and cooler.

    Windows 7 Home Premium - As an additional boot option to Win XP, I installed Windows 7. With the exception of the Intel video, Windows 7 installed all the other required drivers. Windows 7 ran reasonably well with 1GB of ram.

    2GB ram - for a final upgrade to the aging notebook, I wanted to see if 2GB of ram was possible. After reading various technical info from the Intel site, it was mentioned that the 852GM chipset was capable of 2GB of ram. FWIW, CPUZ reports the notebook's chipset as 855GM. After reading users' review of various brands of PC2700 SO-Dimm 1GB memory at the *Egg, I was enlightened to find users' success in installing 2GB of ram in other manufacturers' notebook using the same chipset. I ordered a couple of the G-Skill 1GB sticks. After installing the pair of G-Skill ram sticks, I crossed my fingers and pressed the power button and much to my relief, the notebook recognized the ram and presented the dual boot option. Both Win XP and Windows 7 booted successfully.

    With the upgrades, the old Gateway MX6131 runs reasonably well and is acceptable for web surfing. Given the current price (November 2010) of used Pentium M735 (around $20) and M745($35 to $40), the upgrading the CPU is definitely a cheap alternative for extending the life of the notebook.
     
    JamesVonU, Nov 14, 2010
    #1