Gateway LX6810 BIOS and fan issues. Help!

Hi all.

I purchased a Gateway LX6810 a little while ago. Later I upgraded the video card, sound card, power supply, added another hard drive, and put in more case fans. Gateway neglected to include ANY case fans, and the unit overheated often.

The problem I am having is with controlling the fans and the BIOS. Basically, there is no control available (through BIOS or Speedfan). They came out with a recent BIOS update (which I installed), and the only change I can see is the CPU fan runs at 3250 RPM instead of 1400 RPM. It appears to me that Gateway realized they built it wrong, so they increased the fan speed of the CPU.

Now it is loud and annoying. I can't change any of the speeds. Overheating is not an issue because I installed more case fans appropriately. My issue is with the BIOS and controlling fan speed. Is there any way around this? Can I flash the BIOS to unlock it? Am I doing something wrong?

I am contemplating just putting a new mobo in. I am sick of dealing with Gateway.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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having same problem hopefully someone will have an answer

Reply to ajshell

I emailed gateway a week ago and no reply. Their tech support is worthless. I think i am just going to buy a new motherboard because I am that picky.

Anyone else have any news?

Reply to gtmethod3

I had the same problem. What I did was install a fan controller. The controller controls the speed of the cpu fan. With it I lowered it down to to around 1600 rpm then I installed a silent fan for exhaust 120mm in the back and a silent fan for intake 80mm, in the front.

The thing is that if you install a new motherboard the gateway oem version of vista that came with your pc most likely will not work with it. You will have to find some modified bios for it to work or buy a new copy of vista.

Well both of these options are not exactly easy. You have to know what your doing. I went the fan controller way but I had to do a little mod to my fan controller because the connector for the Gateway cpu fan is 4 pins and my fan controller was 3 pin.
The 4th pin only controls the fan speed the other 3 pins are the same. So on the fan controller connector I had to cut the side of it off. Because it is like a little rectangle and I had to remove one of the sides so the 4 pin connector could fit in properly. So 3 pins were connected properly and the fourth pin is not needed. As we can control the fan speed through the controller. I used this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 20MATE%202

Message edited by elitecamper on 08-15-2009 at 11:30:11 PM

Reply to elitecamper

I am having the same problem with the BIOS update and now the loud annoying fan. Contacted Gateway support, and they want me to ship (at my expense) the computer to them to fix. They believe it is a hardware failure. Has anyone shipped it in? Do they fix the problem? OR, can I flash back to the previous BIOS?

Reply to stooge0120

They should just make the old Bios available online, but they don't want to. Their customer service is pretty awful.

You could install a fan controller to lower the speed of the fan down, which is what I did.
But if you are not really comfortable messing around with the insides of the computer you could ship it out to them.

Good luck.

Reply to elitecamper

i am having the same problem, what a piece of *** customer service they got. I asked them original version of the BIOS and they want me to ship the PC to depot or what ever the hell they call. It drives me crazy, it got louder and normally BIOS updated fixes problem not make it worse. I got my lesson, F*CK gateway. I don't know if there is any way to downgrade the BIOS version or fix this without going through the shipping process.

Reply to amileaway

I just bought a completely new motherboard and installed a clean OS. Now it runs quieter, cleaner, and I have it over clocked. Pre-built PCs are a pain.

Does anyone know a way I can flash my Gateways MOBO at all? I just have it sitting in my closet. Is there any way to unlock it? Or even do anything with it? I don't really care if I end up bricking it...

Reply to gtmethod3

Found the older Gateway LX6810 Bios on the Gateway site:

ftp://ftp.gateway.com/pub/hardwar [...] rs/LX6810/

Just download and run the file LX6810_BIOS, and the fan returns to normal quiet operation!

Reply to maseace

I am having the same issue I have not updated the BIOS or added a fan yet my PC just started to to the random shut down a week ago so reading all of your inputs what the best route to go should I leave the LX6810 the way it is and just update the BIOS and that should fix the overheating issue or don't miss with the BIOS and add a new fan if so what fan is recommended

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to joe78721

joe78721 wrote :

I am having the same issue I have not updated the BIOS or added a fan yet my PC just started to to the random shut down a week ago so reading all of your inputs what the best route to go should I leave the LX6810 the way it is and just update the BIOS and that should fix the overheating issue or don't miss with the BIOS and add a new fan if so what fan is recommended

It appears that all the BIOS update does is increase the CPU fan speed. I believe this fixed the problem for many, but at the cost of having a loud noisy fan going all the time. I would recommend putting a 120mm case fan for exhaust. Just having some sort of airflow really makes a difference. If you call Gateway, all they will say is to update the BIOS. Hope this helps. Let me know if you need any other info.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to gtmethod3

I have updated the BIOS and have noisy fans. The machine already has additional fans and has been problem free. NOW I have a very noisy revved up fan...

The link for the original BIOS is asking for a username and password. How do I login to get that original BIOS?

Thanks!

Reply to TeronosaurusRex

The link to the older BIOS does not make me login, not sure why it's doing that for you. I did have a problem after downgrading to the older BIOS - I was getting a CMOS checksum error that would not clear unless I removed the motherboard battery. The CMOS settings would not save for some reason. I ended up going back to the 722 BIOS and getting the fan speed controller mentioned by a previous poster. It's nice to be able to adjust the fan speed to exactly the balance I like between speed and noise.

Reply to maseace

I figured it out...google search eventually showed a user/password for the ftp.

Unzip the old BIOS.zip

Copy the name from the new BIOS file and paste that over the old BIOS file name.
Now that the old bios file is named the same as the new BIOS file...

Delete all the files but the BIOS in the old BIOS folder. Copy over all the files in the folder from the new BIOS folder(minus the new bios file) into the old BIOS folder.
Now run Winflash(which is the app that was moved over from the newer bios folder).
It will then flash to the old/original BIOS properly.
After restart it did say something about CMOS checksum error when first booted. I hit F1 or F2 whichever it was to set/restore to default...problem solved. Fan is back at around 1400rpm normally. No CMOS error after choosing restore/default whatever it was when prompted.

With the one additional fan out the back, no issues now. Machine quiet once again. I am going to order a larger 120mm fan for the back(replacing the 80mm that is there now) and a new quieter 80mm fan for the front for intake.
I'd rather have the original BIOS and slower fan speed(with the additional fans) as those fan controllers tend to get hot. With the original BIOS, the CPU fan does ramp up if it is necessary to do so...

Oh, and I did call Gateway. They're beyond useless. Rude, not helpful and argued there is no old BIOS available and wanted the machine shipped back to them. The tech said they don't have an OLD BIOS and the logic board would have to be replaced to fix it. I said, if you can flash a new BIOS, you can flash back the old BIOS...
They are indeed useless. That and a machine under warranty is a machine under warranty. It doesn't matter if I bought it used. They argued about that and finally agreed, by the serial # it was still under warranty. That took 30 minutes to resolve...and another 30 for them to prove how useless they are.

I'll never buy gateway/acer again, no matter if it is for less than half of new and barely used. Gateway is owned by Acer now.

In the meantime, this used machine is great for the $$$ invested. Just had to figure out how to fix what their BS updated BIOS broke. Shame that even under warranty their support is useless. Hopefully don't have any further issues while in warranty as I can see they wont be much help.

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by TeronosaurusRex on 11-05-2009 at 09:25:41 AM

Reply to TeronosaurusRex

gtmethod3 wrote :

It appears that all the BIOS update does is increase the CPU fan speed. I believe this fixed the problem for many, but at the cost of having a loud noisy fan going all the time. I would recommend putting a 120mm case fan for exhaust. Just having some sort of airflow really makes a difference. If you call Gateway, all they will say is to update the BIOS. Hope this helps. Let me know if you need any other info.

I think I'd likt to try your suggestion, where do you plug in a additional fan at. All I see is a systems fan 3 pin connector on my MOBO.

Reply to budmetal

You can plug fans into any spare power plugs from the power supply.

Reply to maseace

TeronosaurusRex wrote :

I figured it out...google search eventually showed a user/password for the ftp.

Unzip the old BIOS.zip

Copy the name from the new BIOS file and paste that over the old BIOS file name.
Now that the old bios file is named the same as the new BIOS file...

Delete all the files but the BIOS in the old BIOS folder. Copy over all the files in the folder from the new BIOS folder(minus the new bios file) into the old BIOS folder.
Now run Winflash(which is the app that was moved over from the newer bios folder).
It will then flash to the old/original BIOS properly.
After restart it did say something about CMOS checksum error when first booted. I hit F1 or F2 whichever it was to set/restore to default...problem solved. Fan is back at around 1400rpm normally. No CMOS error after choosing restore/default whatever it was when prompted.

With the one additional fan out the back, no issues now. Machine quiet once again. I am going to order a larger 120mm fan for the back(replacing the 80mm that is there now) and a new quieter 80mm fan for the front for intake.
I'd rather have the original BIOS and slower fan speed(with the additional fans) as those fan controllers tend to get hot. With the original BIOS, the CPU fan does ramp up if it is necessary to do so...

Oh, and I did call Gateway. They're beyond useless. Rude, not helpful and argued there is no old BIOS available and wanted the machine shipped back to them. The tech said they don't have an OLD BIOS and the logic board would have to be replaced to fix it. I said, if you can flash a new BIOS, you can flash back the old BIOS...
They are indeed useless. That and a machine under warranty is a machine under warranty. It doesn't matter if I bought it used. They argued about that and finally agreed, by the serial # it was still under warranty. That took 30 minutes to resolve...and another 30 for them to prove how useless they are.

I'll never buy gateway/acer again, no matter if it is for less than half of new and barely used. Gateway is owned by Acer now.

In the meantime, this used machine is great for the $$$ invested. Just had to figure out how to fix what their BS updated BIOS broke. Shame that even under warranty their support is useless. Hopefully don't have any further issues while in warranty as I can see they wont be much help.

Hi, what was the user login and password? I tried google searching and could not find it. I would greatly appreciate it if you could provide it as the noise level is annoying for me as well

Reply to happy1984

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