Gateway P-6860/6831 CPU Upgrade

It's a bad idea changing the Thermal pad from the chipset and putting on Thermal paste instead. That pad was a lot thicker and denser than the lotion like paste you replaced it with. Once it gets hot it will loose contact
with the chipset and loose any cooling abilit. The pad was there for a reason and should not have been replaced. Heat will be an issue for the chipset now. My temps after replacing my CPU with the pad in tact runs only around
33-36 at idle.

 

yep what he said, it shouldn't be tempered with.

 

Any comments? (I only changed the blue thermal paste)

 

Well with that said, which pad do you recommend I buy? I took it off because it ripped when I removed the heatsink, not because I just felt like wasting some as5 on the computer. And is there a "right" way of putting the pad on? Or just treat it like any sticker?

 

I would check Radio Shack or some other computer/electronics store. They should have several different Thermal pads. You want to get one that isn't too thin and has high conductivity and compressability.
http://www.tglobal.com.tw/en/h48-6r.php

 

Sorry for the noob question, where is this thermal pad located? I have the 6860FX and a T8300 in hand gonna do upgrade, but run into this last few message about thermal pad kinda stopped me...does 6860 FX have it? if so where and how do i make sure i dont rip it so i can put it back>?...thanks much

Howard

 

Yes, the FX6860 has it. It is on the chipset heatsink which is the one on the far right with the CPU on the left. Just take your time when you remove the heatpipe and sinks. Make sure you unscrew and tighten the 5 screws in numbered order. Don't overtighten.

 

Hi!
I reapplied the thermal paste in my 6831...the temps seems to stayed the same.

ANother thing, I noticed this earlier (before the CPU upgrade) that both my GPU and CPU seems to run near the same temperature, however my GPU fan blows out hot air, but my CPU fan blows out (almost) cold air...any1 else has the same thing?

 

I think we need a bit more information then what you provided. What did you reapply thermal paste to? The CPU or the chipset or both? The GPU fan is suppose to blow out the hot air, however I can only feel it under heavy gaming where the GPU does get a bit hot. My CPU stays usually cooler than the GPU. At idle however they are pretty close. 37-39C on the CPU and about 43c on the GPU. What are your temps? And what do you consider the temps to be close or almost the same?

 

I reapplied for both CPU and chipset.
Under WoW my GPU is 65C and my CPU is 64C.
According to HWMonitor ACPI temperatures are ~63C.

 

That seems a bit High to me. My cpu reads at 35c and my GPU at 45c as I type this. So unless you just spend 3 hours of Crysis gaming those temps are way high for just regular use or idle temps.

May I ask how much Thermal paste you applied to the CPU? Most people make the mistake of using way too much. A rice type amount is plenty for the CPU area. And for the chipset. Well, regardless of how much you use it will not be enough since after that sucker gets hot the paste will loose cohesion and therefore any cooling ability. Perhaps that is why your Cpu is running way hot.

 

tom, which chip do you have?

 

"And for the chipset. Well, regardless of how much you use it will not be enough since after that sucker gets hot the paste will loose cohesion and therefore any cooling ability. Perhaps that is why your Cpu is running way hot"

And anything I can do about this? What does the other people do with the paste on the chispet (next to the CPU) when they upgrade the CPU?
For the CPU I applied a little bit more than a rice type amount.

 

looks like you really need an answer from someone with a t9500 cpu. your temps are actually fine. the only way to get super low temps is to get a t9300, which can drop down to one core and use that fancy intel dynamic stuff. probably one of the few reasons why the chip cost so much less than the t9500. it's a power saver chip, while the t9500 is a bit more power hungry. (speculation of course).

not sure iof you tried this, but lift the back up about 3/4 of an inch off the table to let the fans have a bit more breathing room. see what that does for you.

 

How does T8300 compare with T9300 power saving and temperature wise?

 

The trusted and less power hungry T9300 of course

 

I just reused the Thermal pad that was on the chipset. I guess I was lucky and it didn't rip on me. Thermal pads can be purchased at any Radio Shack or other computer supply stores. A little less Thermal paste on the CPU may also get your temps down a bit. I used a tiny bit of Tuniq TX-2 that someone recommended to me and spread it on the cpu with a clean tiny brush. So far so good and the temps seem about right. The GPU gets pretty hot after some gaming and it has shut down on me a couple of times. Not sure if it is the 177.41 driver and some of the games I play or the heat from the GPU but it kinda worries me especially what I heard about Nvidia sending out defective 8 series chips to laptop manufactureres that heat up and die.
Nvidia stock dropped drastically after they made that anouncement.
Wonder if the Nvidia gpus in the 6860's are some of the defective ones.

 

personal opinion..... it doesn't....

 

your temps are fine
forget about it

 

Hi guys,
My friend has a Dell 1520 and it gets hot hot hot playing Condom-4 and the game quits. It has the 8600 gt and a 2.2 intel cpu.
We did not know about the heat issues with the dell and will not buy another one again. I'm not here to bash dell just stating the fact of how hot the thing gets and causes problems in gaming.

That said, anyone have issues playing Cod-4 and heat shutdowns with the Gateway?

We are hoping the Gateway has better cooling than the Dell.
I have an older Gateway-MX7525-AMD-Athlon-64-bit-4000-Laptop-LOADED- with a Desktop Amd 4000 Cpu and it gets hot in Cod-4 but has never shut off on me. Of course it has shabby graphics. I'm telling my friend that I think the Gateway runs cooler.
We both want to buy the Gateway and upgrade the cpu to the T9300.

Look forward to some replies thanks in advance for ur time.

 

The Gateway can run pretty hot after some extensive gaming. I had it shut down on me a couple of times playing Ages of Empires III and once on Crysis.
Laptops run a lot hotter than desktops when stressed especially playing games on it. So I doubt that the Gateway will run any cooler than the Dell with the 8600 gt. It will just run a lot faster and better

 

I have never seen my 6831fx have GPU temps higher than 68C. On COD4 with 1440x900 and max settings with 4x antiliasing, I have only seen 65C MAX even after playing for 3 hours. The key for this laptop is to place a deck of cards (or something like that) under the rear of the laptop. This allows the intake fans (2 on the bottom) to pull in plenty of air. I don't use a cooler and use it in ambient temps of 27-30C (80's in F).

This is in direct contrast to my G1S B1 with 8600GT which ran in the mid to upper 90's Celsius. I was always worried about it shutting down on me from overheating. That is why I went with the Gateway. That and it is literally twice as fast in games.

Also consider that the GPU on the Gateway runs cooler than many of the aircooled Desktop GPU's out there. I am not trying to sell you just letting you know that you should not worry about the 6831fx with the t9300 when it comes to heat. At stock settings you should see a range of 35-70 on the cores and 40-70 on the GPU. These are reasonable temps. I believe Thermal shutdowns will not occur unitl 100C. Maybe someone else can verify that please.
If someone else is having shutdowns due to thermal overload,they should be worried that they may have a defective laptop. Either that or they have OC'ed waaayyy to much!

 

i get 39-80 cpu wise, 40-75 gpu.

when i installed my x7800 for the first time i applied too much thermal paste and as a result the cpu would heat up to 90c after 2 minutes of TAT /orthos still i played hours and hours of crysis and never experienced a shut down, it did get me worried when the acpi tzs0 showed 100c after long crysis session....
i reapplied the thermal paste and it never got above 80, the gpu never crossed the 75c mark even when o/c.

not a single shut down yet.
i do use zalman nc-1000 (should have got the 2000) but i think its more for my peace of mind than for the notebook

all said, a minority of users do report higher idle/load temps on their gpu/cpu, i would warmly suggest to monitor your temps while gaming and if they are too high use the BB 14 days policy and just get another one.

 

Wow, that CPU temp seems a tad high. After 3 hours of gaming my cpu temp was at 44c and the gpu at 69c. I have the t-9300 and using Tuniq TX-2 Thermal paste which is suppose to be better than AS5 but that is hear say.
The trick is to put very little of that stuff on there. A rice size amount is all that is needed.

 

3 hours of company of heroes max cpu 80 max gpu 65
the x7800 throttling temp is 105, so 80 is no issue.

anyway 44 seems too low, most people report this as their idle temp.
what program u use for taking temps ?

 

I am using the newest version of Core Temp for to check the cpu temps and
GPU z025 for the GPU temps. My idle temps are 35/36c on the cpu and 41c one the GPU

 

I guess I got lucky, I picked up the P6860FX from Best Buy for $1099.99 !!!

They only had one in stock. The first thing I did was add an exact WD Scorpio 320 hard drive and re load VISTA 64 bit in RAID 0. Configuring this thing is too simple and VISTA 64 has the RAID drivers. I had a thumb drive prepared just in case it wanted the drivers. This thing is awesome. I am contemplating upgrading the CPU, but I wonder if I will see a $300 improvement.

 

This looks to be a great guide. I ordered my T9300 from newegg for my new 6860 (What a deal from Bestbuy!), and it should be here Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm a little nervous doing this installation, as I'm new to laptop hardware, but this seems fairly straightforward and easy. I do have two questions for those that have performed this upgrade:

1. Did the original thermal paste make it difficult to remove the heatpipe from the processor after the screws were removed?

2. What did you use to clean the excess thermal paste from the heatpipe before reattaching it to the board?

Thanks to those who reply! This is the only thing that has me a little nervous (I've done a ton of upgrades to my desktop before without issue, but as I said laptops are a new adventure for me.)

 

my idle times with the stock, untouched CPU are at 41 to 43 degrees celcius....is this normal????

 

the original thermal paste didnt make it too difficult to remove the heatpipe after removing the screws. just be gentle with it.

and i used the arctic silver thermal material remover and surface purifier found here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835100010 it works great.

 

the original thermal paste didnt make it too difficult to remove the heatpipe after removing the screws. just be gentle with it.

and i used the arctic silver thermal material remover and surface purifier found here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835100010 it works great.

i used it when i was upgrading the processor in my old toshiba and again with the 6860.

 

man..been playing gears of war..the game looks gorgeous on it...however with the T5550 (I assume this is the problem or could it be gpu temp?), the game stutter once in a while and frame rate drop noticeably. and on a few occassion, the fame just froze..and i had to press power button to hard shut it down.....

I did not have any utility or program installed to monitor FPS nor tempt but i felt the left heat outlet, its hot but not burning....any idea what this might be?

 

gears of war is just a bad port.
use the search it was mentioned b4 and i think one guy suggested a work around.

 

Thanks for the response. Another quick question... I just took my 6860 apart just to get it prepped for tomorrow's surgery, and I realized that I don't have the springs mentioned in the guide...Has anyone else not had the springs? Has me freaked out!

 

let us know how it gors. my 6860 is one week old and my T9300 will be going in wendsday night.i got mine at best buy and hope the springs are there.

 

Hey guys.. I just got my 6860 and i'm loving it.. but I am for sure ordering a T9300 in a few days.. and i want to order 4gigs of pc6400 800mhz ram replace my pc5300 667mhz.. will I be able to replace the ram?

and I know people have probably asked this but I couldnt find.. so please i'm not double posting..

I was wondering if our video chips are upgradeable? i would like to have a 8800M GTX if I can upgrade.. if not i'm still very satisfied..

thanks guys

 

Nope, that can't be done. Even if it could, there's no place to get them from. Laptop cards are mostly proprietary.

 

you will be able to replace the ram
but it will downclock back to 667 so don't throw your money away.

 

VaderSith

Response 1. The thermal paste is not the problem. Watch the thermal pad located underneath the right side of the heat pipe. This pad is somewhat fragile and you don't want to tear it when you remove and replace the heatpipe. Otherwise you may see some overheating of your chipset.

Response 2. You can buy special cleaner. However, you can also just buy 91% Isopropyl Alcohol from your local pharmacy and gently clean the heat pipe surface and the new processor with a small of amount of the alcohol on a lint-free cloth.

If you have installed a processor on a desktop motherboard before, you will do fine here. I found it is actually easier, mostly because the heatpipe is easier to deal with than desktop heatsinks. Good Luck!

 

what does one do if the pad on the heat sink rips or tears?? and no, i have not installed mt T9300 yet as it arrives tomorrow, just want to be prepared !!!

 

Someone mentioned that you should go to Radio Shack to get a replacement for the GPU heat pad. I didn't have that problem and I think you'd be really unlucky if it did rip as it isn't on with a lot of "stickiness." As posted before, take your time and be careful when taking off the heatpipe and you won't have any problems. I just upgraded my 6860 with a T9300 thanks to the great help from this thread. It's running great. I wish my house wasn't a 1000 degrees, hopefully I don't and won't have any heat issues. THANKS to EVERYONE in this post for assisting me and others that want to perform this upgrade!

 

"you will be able to replace the ram
but it will downclock back to 667 so don't throw your money away."

Howcome it wont read the ram at 800mhz?

and how much of an improvement in games have ya'll gotten in FPS with the T9300 upgrade?

 

As far as game improvements, I haven't looked at the FPS, but Crysis recommended that I run the game at all High settings as opposed to Medium (I was running the game on high with textures, shadows objects, and shaders on high using the stock T5550 CPU). The game runs flawlessly on high even during crazy firefights. I will probably try some of the settings on very high to see how much I can push it.

 

it wont read the ram at 800mhz because of the chipset that is in these computers. the chipset has a 667mhz fsb so it wont read anything higher than that, which is why it would downclock your 800mhz ram to 667mhz.

as for FPS improvements, i am able to run COD4 on high with AA and AF at max at 1440 x 900 resolution between 45 and 60 fps, average is about 60 though, depending on the map.

team fortress 2 all settings on high with 16xQAF runs at 70-90 fps

and i havent played world in conflict yet even though i bought it the other day....

 

Diablo.. thanks for the info man.. and those are the games I play well COD4 is.. right now I gotta run it on 1024 to get those frames.. so yeah its def a improvement then ..

btw Diablo.. did you swap out the stock ram with Kingston? and howcome?

 

i had the kingston lying around going to waste in my old toshiba x205, and i've always preferred to have kingston or crucial ram in my pc's, be it desktop or laptop. so i just swapped out the 4gb of samsung, for the 4gb's of kingston.
i guess im brand loyal....not to mention the lifetime warranty.

 

Well, when I removed my heatsink I did in fact rip the thermal pad. I didn't have another pad on hand, so I just applied a little more as5 onto the chipset than you normally would with a cpu since I *THINK* there is a slightly larger gap on the chipset side.

It's been a month since I did that and my chipset temps sit around 50-51C normally.

Edit: Looking at HWmonitor, there's two temps under ACPI which I assume is the chipset. TZS0 is at 39-41C while TZS1 is around 51C. I didn't know chipsets have two temps.

 

well these tzs0/1 are unsolved mystery

 

Well, all i can say is that I installed my T9300 in 8 minutes, the GPU pad did not rip or tear, there were NO springs on the MOBO or heatsink, and this thing is fast as ****. My Windows Experience Index went from 4.5 to 5.1, it is running 5 degrees Celsius less than before according to Core Temp and I used AS5, I AM IMPRESSED !!!!! I just wonder if the CPU that came out will run in my Clevo M57U ?????

Thanks for the guide....this was TOOOO easy !!!!!

 

congrats.
8 min is not bad for the 1st time
still much room for improvement.

however, the pad has nothing to do with the gpu, its the chipset.
the gpu is on the other side and cant be accessed without taking the whole thing apart.