I think I'm going with the P6831 - Warranty on CPU upgrade?

I was originally looking at the ASUS G2S B2 but it's about $600.00 more and I can't see the money being well spent there after discussing screen resolution for print which may be better on the Gateway due to the lower res.

I've asked this before on the main forum but the CPU thing is still a worrisome spot. Some people say it will slug the thing down - others say it has no effect on gaming and it can be upgraded. Another person told me they may be coming out with a new model with higher CPU. I'm in Canada though and only a few Gateway models are available - it looks like the P6831 is the best one available in Canada as of right now. I'm not really in a rush - could wait a month or two.

I am willing to spend the $300 or so to put a better CPU in it but I'm concerned that that would void the warranty. If I get a professional computer shop to install it would my warranty still be protected?

I understand that Gateway has made it easy to replace so that seems to indicate the warranty would not be effected (same as a ram upgrade) but I thought I'd ask first.

It appears to be $1399.00 at Bestbuy.ca but none in stock - it must be very popular which is comforting.

And lastly what external hard drive in the 750gig 1tb range with eSata do you recommend? Looking at Seagate Freeagent Pro and Lacie eSataII drives (apparently a secret 3 year warranty on models sold after October or November 2007).

 

As for drives I like Seagate and Western Digital.

 

You can buy T9300 from tddirect.com for $340 + shipping + gst. I have been waiting on T9300 for over a month now but more I wait, the less I want to upgrade. It plays every game at max except Crysis at high/med settings on native resolution. The people that complaints the most about the CPU are ones who needs to render movies and graphics. Instead of waiting 2 hours, they can finish the job in 1 hour using T9300.

Overall, its worth even its $1399. I got mine for $1350.

 

yeah the cpu is great for now, like peter said its more then enough unless you NEED to encode videos at twice the speed.

 

Hmm so are all the orders form just about anywhere on backorder? I have contemplated going to the T9300 just for some more horsepower. As every has said and I completely agree the games run great as is but there are a few situations (including a variety of games running at max resolutions) where some extra cpu would come in handy.

So my main question is are the T9300 not available immediately? It would be pointless to order with something like 2 day shipping and pay extra from some of these places like lagoom.com (it says they have them in stock) ?

 

I can vouch for the Seagate FAP. Works great without any mounting issues. Not sure what you mean about secret warranty..3 years on Seagate.

 

I just got one on Friday, from Lagoom.com, for $336.48. They appear to be still in stock.

http://www.lagoom.com/INTEL_CPU_CORE_2_DUO_T9300_2.50GHZ/BX80576T9300/partinfo-id-579832.html

.

 

Hydra

Sorry - I was talking about Lacie. The Seagate comes with 5 years. Many stores say the Lacie comes with 1-2 years but I read somewhere that the drives actually come with a 3 year warranty making it a bit better - some models are eSataII which doubles the speed of the Seagate Free Agent Pro. Still I'm leaning to the Seagate despite the weird power button because they seem to be better built and the speed boost is probably irrelevant.

Still want to know about the Gateway warranty if I upgrade the processor.

 

I think someone has already said to give them a call and find out. If you are really that paranoid about Gateway's warranty, why not keep the old CPU and if something goes wrong, put the old CPU back and send it for warranty repair.

 

ok crazy question, will a E8400 Wolfdale work in a P6831FX?

 

Has anyone noticed a big diffrence when upgrading to 4gb of ram? does the 4-4-4-12 ram make a big diffrence also?