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.

I went the route of a new motherboard (DFI Lan Party P45-T2RS), and so far, I am very pleased. I actually ended up overclocking the unit to 3.1 Ghz with stock ram.

Have you tried going into speedfan > configure > advanced tab > select the chipset (only one should have the thing you're looking for) > Change the PWM 1 to software controlled?

I believe that's the thing to do. I had to do that with my new board to get speedfan to work. I don't know if it will work or not with the gateway board; the fan controller may be completely locked.

A few people with the same problem went out and bought a fan controller which solves the problem as well. Basically taking the gateway mobo out of the fan loop. This is a cheaper alternative to getting a new board.

If you installed case fans, you could even take the top half of the cylinder out. Would that help the noise at all? I'm pretty sure the overheating in the unit originated on the north bridge chipset (heat sink right below the CPU). So gateway turned the speed up of the only fan they could to compensate for it, even though it doesn't provide efficient cooling to the chip.

Let me know what you figure out. I'm curious to see what type of contraption you develop.

If there is anything I can help out with, let me know.

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!