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old-school gateway question

K

khturner

n00b
Joined
Aug 10, 2004
Messages
23
My little brother has this gateway 400c, it has a 400MHz celeron and 64 megs of ram, and a voodoo2 I put in there a while ago. I can't find any other specs about this computer online, does anyone know anything about it, or where I can find this info? Also, what sorts of upgrades can (should) we do to it for less than $100? Thanks a lot.
 
Slot or socket CPU? Motherboard chipset? In either case, you'll probably be limited to a slot 466MHz Celeron or PII or socket 533MHz Celeron as far as CPU upgrades.

Look up the complete model name of the system (e.g. G6-400c) if you want to see what upgrades are available. It's probably not really worth it to get a PowerLeap upgrade since you can buy a new motherboard and CPU for less.

The Gateway G6 mini-towers fit regular ATX motherboards and have regular ATX PSUs. At my last company I upgraded one of my Gateway G6 computers to a Celeron 1.7GHz + new motherboard by just swapping out the motherboard. There are some Athlon motherboards that can use SDRAM (ECS K7S5A with 2 DDR plus 2 PC100/PC133 SDRAM slots, for example) so you can still use the old memory.

$100 isn't much of an upgrade budget, but you should be able to grab an Athlon XP and a K7S5A motherboard for around $80-$90 shipped off pricewatch/ebay.
 
I skimmed over the 64MB part. SDRAM is pretty expensive now and with only 64MB forget about salvaging that little memory. The best you can get for $100 is probably off ebay (or Fry's if you live near one): motherboard (ATX Intel or AMD), CPU (Celeron or Duron/AthlonXP) and 256MB PC2100. If you go Intel, a Celeron 1A GHz (Tualatin Celeron) + overclocking is a good bargain. The stock PSU isn't good enough for a P4 or P4 based Celeron.

With another $50-$60 you could pick up a newer video card that's somewhat decent.

if you have one of the micro-tower systems (micro ATX motherboard and tiny 90W-100W PSU), forget about upgrading that system. It would be a waste of money to add memory and a small CPU speed upgrade.
 
Just add more RAM, a 128 MB stick added to that 64 should perk it up a little. That systems too old to justify upgrading much.
 
yeah, I figured that the motherboard was going to be pretty limiting as far as cpu upgrades went. I'll run all this stuff by my brother, see what he wants to do. as long as it will run C&C red alert he'll be happy, which it already does, so I might not even get the chance to bust this thing open. anyway, thanks for all the advice, nothing beats the [H] forums!
 
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