Upgrading other components, such as video or sound, requires you to reinstall drivers for the devices each time the operating system is recovered. The drivers will not be on the hard drive recovery partition, and must be installed from backup media. There is no way to integrate the drivers for the new devices into the hard drive recovery partition.

Upgrading to a non-Gateway motherboard would make the operating system prompt for activation, as it is locked to Gateway hardware. If you are installing a non-Gateway motherboard, a new operating system would also need to be purchased.