I bought the Gateway dx4200-09 a couple years ago. Amd 9150e 1.8Ghz, 4gb ram, Windows Vista 64bit. I just wanted to report it is possible to upgrade this computer because I believe many are stuck with it's performance and lack of upgrade information. Dcs A10c has peaked my interest so I needed to upgrade. Gateway never updated the Bios so I wasn't sure if I could get an Am3 processor to work on the Am2+ motherboard. It does, thankfully. My upgrades include, Amd Phenom II 840 @ 3.2Ghz Stock, 950w Zumax Psu, 8Gb Geil black dragon 800Mhz ddr2 Ram and a Palit 2Gb gtx560ti video card. A new network card (Netgear Ga311) was also necessary as the video card and Psu wires take up a lot of room and only Pci slots were left. This is an mAtx tower so it's a tight fit but it worked out good. Before this build I searched a long time for info about upgrading and it was hard to come by, so hopefully I can help somebody out with this report. I did not need to pull out the motherboard battery or Bios update. I did go into the Bios and turn of cool and quiet but I don't know if this had any bearing on it posting. At first it didn't come on so I held in the power off button on the tower and restarted. Good to go. Windows index went from 3.7 to 5.9's in all areas. I think 5.9 is the max on my system. The motherboard only supports 95w cpu's and ddr2 Ram. Gateway mainboard Rs780, chipset is 780g, Southbridge Sb700, Bios American Megatrends Inc. version 7B3P091G 8/6/08

Hope this helps someone.

I've seen a few Gateways that had some pretty good upgrades paths if the PSU was upgraded. Cooling, to me, would be the biggest issue in those super cramped cases. Hopefully, you have more than the PSU exhausting hot air from the case.

Thanks for the report. How does the 560 work on DCS A10C?

Hi Speedbump,

The 560 looks good to me but I don't have anything to compare it with. The case has a stock exhaust fan and the Zumax PSU has a turbo mode and the fan kicks pretty good. Not much room in the case but I think the air has good flow.

Hello Nascar,

I have been searching all over the internet for suitable upgrades for my tower ever since I bought it in May 2009. So if I'm understanding correctly, you just swapped the 95W AM3 processor and everything worked fine?

Any additional details will help me tremendously, I'm kind of new to this and any help will be greatly appreciated.

My upgrades so far have been:

Nvidia 8800 Card
600W PSU
1TB HDD
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 Video Tuner

Upcoming Upgrades:
Maybe a bigger fan
CPU for sure with your great posting
Sound Card

Thanks in advance,

Ernestb08

AM3 cpu can fit AM2 socket boards, but not the other way around.
There's almost no gateway left in my pc too. Going for the full rebuild now, but I've been pretty happy with the components, all things considered.