Help with Gateway P6860fx upgrades

I am interested in upgrading the CPU and ram in this. My laptop also runs a little warmer than it used to as well, and I am a causal gamer with 2 monitors. I also do a lot of Photoshop work, and my laptop has seemed to be bogging down with that program.

What can you recommend me to upgrade the components to that won't cost an arm and a leg but give me some more speed and possibly some cooler temps? (Also, I do run the laptop on a cooling pad, and it still gets incredibly hot, especially at the top of the keyboard where the audio and video controls are located.)

 

Upgrading the RAM on these models is not worth it. The chipset only supports up to DDR2-667 RAM which it already has. The CPU upgrade is the simplest and most effective way to boost performance on these models. There are a few options for the CPU, the best of which are probably the T8300. t9300 or the x9000. All of these are 45nm so they will be fast and run relatively cool. As far as heat, make sure the heatsinks are clear of dust, and it may be a good idea to take the lappy apart and reapply some thermal compound as the original has hardened by now, thus decreasing it's performance. Another thing to consider as an upgrade is adding a 2nd hard drive and reconfiguring the system for RAID 0.

 

You can get 8GB memory for under $200. I wouldn't get the extreme processor, they run hot. the t9300 is nice. You can get the t9300 on eBay for around $175.

 

I was wondering if I could upgrade the ram or not on this. I'll look into the cpu upgrade for sure. I've never changed one out in a laptop before, but have placed them when building a desktop. Is the process much the same other than cleaning off the old?

Also, I was debating about purchasing a 2nd hard drive, possibly a smaller gb ssd drive to place some of my games and other software programs on. Would this help as well with my photoshop? Or would it not be of much use if my photos are saved to another drive? (I have a 1TB external drive)

 

Replacing a CPU is almost like replacing it on a desktop. Pretty easy. If you get an SSD, you should install windows on it. Then use your old HDD for storage.

 

Thanks.

Is there any recommendations for thermal paste as well?

 

OCZ Freeze

 

Arctic MX-3

 

I bought a tube of MX-3 but it clumped up like crazy. Apparently there are bad batches out there. Freeze is less than half the price of mx-3 and more or less just as effective.

 

Thanks guys. I think I'll start out with the cpu upgrade, and I may wait a bit for the larger ssd drives to come down in price a bit before upgrading to that as well!

 

Antec Formula Five dropped my CPU temp by 8C. It $10 on eBay.

 

Are there any newer cpu's that will work with this laptop? I'm not really sure I want to buy a used cpu, which is all I can really come up with for the T9300.

 

You can also put the T9500 in it. I buy used processors all the time. I've never received a bad one yet. On eBay, the T9300 is around $190: t9300 items - Get great deals on Computer Components, PC Laptops Netbooks items on eBay.com! The T9500 is around $230: t9500 items - Get great deals on Computer Components, PC Laptops Netbooks items on eBay.com!

Just make sure you don't get an ES(Engineering Sample), those can be unstable.

 

My extreme CPU runs cooler than my stock CPU...

 

Only CPUs that will work with the 6860 is T8300, T9300, T9500, X7800, X7900, and the X9000.

 

The X7800, x7900, x9000 are nice, but...

1. the X9000 is like $450 ON eBay.
2nd x7800 and x7900 are older than the others and get hotter. They also use more power so, less battery

 

I got my X9000 for under $350 on eBay and i wouldn't spend more than $400 for one. Ripfire sold 2 OEM X9000s on here for $300.

I agree with you about the X7800 and X7900, I was just listing his options.

 

I just checked eBay, none for under $550.

But there is someone selling one for $250 + shipping on NBR market place. It'll go fast.