Quick and cheap upgrade

anksta · 13 Oct 2010 at 21:03

I have a Dell Inspiron 531 and the only upgrade it's ever had is a graphics card and that was only because the old one blew, I have no idea what it is or whether or not it's better than the one that was in there.

But, I do know that I'd like a little more RAM and a lot more space, I ran that thing on the Crucial site to check what I have and what I need, it says I have 2 slots free with 2Gb currently and that I should get 2Gb of DDR2 PC2-5300 but the 6400 is the same price, what's the difference?

Also, I'm running Vista and I hate it so I might put Windows 7 on as my mate has got a copy (he has a business) if I get a new hard drive. The thing is my current one is in on its side in the case, its not in a slot so I don't know where another one would go

So if I wanted that ram what sort should I get, and can I even put another hard drive in?

Not bothered about new parts or anything, just want cheap and quick, how much am I looking at? and what am I looking at?

Cheers

95thrifles · 13 Oct 2010 at 23:23

You can add the 6400 ram but it will downclock to the slower speed, or you could replace your existing 2x1 sticks with 2 new 2x2 sticks of 6400
As long as there's somewhere to fit the new hdd, you'll be ok, fitting it properly reduces vibration but by sounds of it that's not an issue

anksta · 14 Oct 2010 at 11:45

95thrifles said:
You can add the 6400 ram but it will downclock to the slower speed, or you could replace your existing 2x1 sticks with 2 new 2x2 sticks of 6400
As long as there's somewhere to fit the new hdd, you'll be ok, fitting it properly reduces vibration but by sounds of it that's not an issue

why are the 6400 sticks the same price? If they're the same price shouldn't I just get that then in case I upgrade again later down the line?

If I got a new 1Tb hard drive and then put Windows 7 on that, is it a good idea to have the 2 operating systems on there? I think I've done that before with an older computer and it made it proper gash, was much better just to have a clean wipe.

95thrifles · 14 Oct 2010 at 13:54

Dont know why theyre the same price, supply n demand n all that
Its upto you which you get
You could partition the new HDD to allow you to dual boot but I personally wouldnt bother, not for a vista/7 combo, some people do to allow the use of Linux etc, never seen the need personally
Windows 7 is very good, everything vista was meant to be, you wont be disappointed with it

zebedeee · 10 Jan 2011 at 14:08

personally i'd get ready to open a museum for all DELL machines and just go for a brand new build, i know u said u wanted fast an easy transfer if u did do something drastic but as i have had a dell 6400 since they first released i have gone thru the upgrading process only to find very little differences,
First I upgraded the graphic card to a saphire ATI 3850 (best card for slot available) which admitedly is an awsome upgrade from the previous graphics, although i only installed the drivers for it i never installed the large package to configure all the stuff (the large package slowed my machine too much).
Then i upgraded my cpu from a pentium 4 2.4GHz to a pentium 4 2.8GHz which appeared to be the most useless upgrade i have ever done, there was no seeable differences, it may of enabled my machine to just appear more stable when surfing the net rather than crashing the net out from time to time.
Then came the memory upgrade,
To upgrade this i went to dell's home site to find out the specs needed in order to upgrade,
The memory already inside my machine was running at 333, upon purchasin 2 gig of memory that could run at 2 speeds 333 or 555 so i removed my old memory to enable the new memory to run at 555 although as it transpired my machine can't/won't run at 555 so in popped the old memory aswell giving me a total of 2.5gig memory running at 333.
the memory capacity upgraded makes running the machine a lot better than it used to be, but alas with all these upgrades it still leaves my machine incapable of doing much else on apart from surfing the net, printing documents or pictures on or downloading media.

so getting back to the main point... DO NOT UPGRADE DELL MACHINES UNLESS YOU ARE NEEDING A BIGGER DOOR STOP

joking apart, if you build from scratch then atleast you'll have capacity to upgrade pieces instead of been stuck with a machine that needs all changing just to improve graphics etc