Gateway FX 6831-03 Impressions

The FX chassis is solid black with red accents. The side panels and part of the peak are more than of a apartment blackness whereas the front bezel is glossy black and features ii "inconspicuous" optical drives -- one being a Blu-ray unit. The squirt push button for each of them is nicely disguised on the correct side of the bezel, while direct below the drives is a panel that slides downwardly to reveal two three.five-inch hot-swappable bulldoze bays.

On the left there'southward a large perforated vent that allows the fans to draw in cool air. The right side console has the FX logo embossed in the eye, a specifications sticker and the Windows proof of license and model number stickers.

Gateway has included five memory card reader slots on the height of the front end bezel: xD, CF, Micro SD, SD / MMC and MS / MS Pro. In that location'southward also a Photo Frame button with an activity LED, two USB ports, headphone and microphone jacks. Pressing the Photo Frame button volition automatically offset a slideshow of photos from any inserted memory card or other selectable location on the hard drive. The difficult bulldoze activity low-cal is right under the MS / MS Pro card slot.

Only higher up these front ports is a backup button, power button and slumber button. The power button sits at the center of a chrome switch that turns on or off the red LED accent lights. These lights can exist found in 3 of the four corners on both sides of the system. Near the back of the arrangement are 2 additional USB ports and a flip-up storage compartment.

The system is powered past a 750 watt FSP Grouping ability supply that is mounted on the height rear of the chassis. It uses a socket LGA1156 motherboard based on the Intel H57 Express chipset that works with 2022 Core series processors to deliver graphics when a discrete graphics bill of fare is absent. But since the Gateway FX6831-03 features a defended video bill of fare (and the processor doesn't have on-flake graphics capabilities), the HDMI and VGA video connections on the I/O console have been capped. Other than that you'll find PS/ii keyboard and mouse connectors, two eSATA ports, six USB ports, an 1394 FireWire port, Ethernet jack and sound jacks with S/PDIF out.

To the correct of the I/O panel is an exhaust fan -- the only one in the system -- and below it is the ATI Radeon Hd 5850 graphics bill of fare. Connections here include two DVI ports, HDMI port and DisplayPort port. The expansion ports have a security door on the back that requires removing a single screw and flipping back a hinged door in order to remove cards from inside. Other security measures include a locking slot for the right side console.

Removing the left side panel requires you lot to unscrew two black screws at the back of the chassis. The interior of the Gateway FX system is typical grey steel. From here nosotros tin run across that the exhaust fan is 80mm in size. The CPU libation has a large fan duct that fits confronting the perforated side console to draw in cool air from outside of the example.

All four memory slots are populated, each with a 4GB stick. I of the retentiveness sticks in our sample wasn't fully secured and would likely have thrown an error lawmaking or failed to be recognized had I not caught this during inspection.

Hard bulldoze expansion inside the instance is express to the two hot-bandy trophy and 1 additional slot below the included Seagate Barracuda 7200.xi 1.5TB hard drive. Four hard drive slots in total should be more than plenty for near users, though.

The Radeon HD 5850 is a standard unbranded carte du jour from ATI. It sits on the peak x16 PCI-E slot on the motherboard. Other expansion options include a single x1 PCI-E slot and one x4 PCI-E slot. With no secondary x16 slots present, Gateway still decided to include a CrossFire cable equally supported past the H57 chipset.

The included keyboard and mouse are boilerplate quality at best. The keyboard is lightweight and features island style keys, although they don't have the same quality feel as some notebook island fashion keys I have used. Besides, the Gateway branded mouse will get the job done in Windows tasks, but I suspect whatsoever serious gamer will supplant this with a practiced aftermarket device in no time. Nevertheless it still features an extra pair of configurable buttons, one on each side of the mouse, in addition to the two standard click buttons and clickable scroll cycle.