# Solved: Gateway SX2800-01 Owners: Graphics Upgrade Now Possible - My Experience



## UFO (Apr 12, 2005)

I'm posting this here for the benefit of Gateway SX2800-01 desktop owners who've been wishing they could upgrade their slimline/small form factor PC's exceedingly lame stock graphics to match its otherwise stellar specs. I'm happy to report that this is now possible with nothing more complicated than cutting a couple of holes with a Dremel - or not, if you want to wing it.

A brief overview for the uninitiated and/or curious:

The Gateway SX2800 series (made by Acer) came out in spring of 2009 and quickly won the Editor's Choice Award at CNET for packing an Intel 2.33GHz Core 2 Quad processor into a compact system (15" x 4" x 11.5") at around $500 retail. The system is screamin' fast, whisper-quiet, and has a few extras like Firewire and eSATA ports that you don't normally find on $500 machines, also included 4GB DDR3 RAM expandable to 8.

There is one significant drawback that's particularly frustrating given the quality of the rest of its stock specs: Integrated Intel graphics that are adequate at best, coupled with an upgrade-nullifying 220w power supply shoehorned into a tiny space (also an eject button for the DVD burner that requires Medieval violence to activate - very weird but tolerable once you're used to it.)

If you want a thorough overview, here are CNET's *written* and *video* reviews of the system.

I haven't really checked, but I assume that other, newer systems have surpassed this one over that three-year span (maybe even a newer Gateway, since this one's now discontinued.) This is intended as information for current owners, or anyone else who wants to create an excellent yet low-cost gaming and general use system, with just a couple hundred bucks beyond the system price and a little tinkering. [Standard disclaimer: I don't have any affiliation with Gateway or with the manufacturers of either the power supply or the graphics card I will describe here, or with the CNET, System Requirements Lab or Squidoo sites that I've linked here.]

Just recently I discovered a manufacturer that makes a 400w power supply that not only fits into the SX2800's space but is significantly _smaller_ than Gateway's stock 220w Lite-On supply - which opens up a whole lot of options for graphics card upgrades, even with the half-height/single-slot size limitation imposed by the case.

As a lifelong geek I'm also a longtime die-hard fan of Tomb Raider - and the most recent TR game, "Underworld," has some notoriously demanding minimum system requirements. You can check your own system against it at *System Requirements Lab* (locate and pick Tomb Raider Underworld from the dropdown, then let it evaluate your system.) Knowing it was going to require an upgrade in any case, I bought the game and tried it with the stock system. It rendered beautifully, but at a frame rate of something like two per second, IOW unusable. After scouring the 'Net for half-height single-slot upgrade graphics cards (an excellent source for this is *the writeup on it at Squidoo*, but beware that it includes double-slot cards that won't fit the SX2800,) I bought one rated for 400w minimum but which reviewers claimed they'd run off of lower-wattage supplies with no problem. It actually worked great for a few hours, then began shutting down after a few minutes' runtime because of that power deficit and/or heating issues.

A little digging and I unearthed a Texas-based company called KDM Power that makes a 400w supply that comes in a truly tiny chassis - much smaller than the meager 220w stock Lite-On supply. KDM advised me that the rear mounting screws wouldn't match the Gateway's hole configuration, but since I'm not planning on carrying the system around in a backpack, that was something I told them I'd work around.

'Long story short, I got the 400w supply installed, cut a "sunroof" into the top of the case to allow the graphics card's onboard fan direct access to the sky (the lone PCI-e slot is located right up at the "ceiling" with no room to spare,) and it's been working flawlessly since. I completed the job on Friday the 18th; it's now Wednesday the 23rd and I've had it running continuously 24/7 since the 18th without a hitch. "Tomb Raider: Underworld" looks cinematic-level spectacular and plays perfectly now, BTW, so any comparable game will presumably work just as well with this setup.

The power supply is *KDM Power model #KDM-MFX9400-80+ *(the last item at the bottom of the page,) and the graphics card I chose is a *Sapphire model 100326LP*, a Radeon HD6670 1GB 128-bit GDDR5. Each item was roughly $90 - the supply direct from KDM, the Sapphire from Newegg. As I said in my Newegg review of the SX2800, I assume that 400w will allow for beefier cards than that one, but it serves my purposes fine.

I also put up *a photo series over at Photobucket*, documenting the installation.

Happy upgrading! 

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