Upgrading an old dell PC

Hi

Dell motherboards tend to have non standard connections for LEDs (power, HD) power on switch etc

check this out first before changing motherboard

see if you can get a second hand Athlon 64x2 6000+

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Inspiron#Inspiron_531.2F531s

Inspiron 531/531s
Dell Inspiron 531 upgraded for gaming purposes.

The Dell Inspiron 531 is Dell's AMD desktop counterpart to the Inspiron 530, and with exception of the CPU and motherboard, is virtually identical. Starting with the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ it can be customized up to an

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+. The Athlon X2 7000, Phenom, Phenom II and Athlon II series are not supported

. It uses 1 GB of DDR2 SDRAM at 667 MHz, which can be upgraded up to 4 GB 800 MHz under JEDEC DDR2 voltage specification. The model features the M2N61-AX OEM motherboard made by ASUS [9] and uses nVidia GeForce 6150 integrated graphics with the nForce 430i chipset, and has two PCI slots, one PCI-e X1 and one PCI-e X16 1.0a slot. Due to the arrangement of the expansion slots, however, use of a double height video card renders the PCI-e X1 slot useless. The motherboard also features four SATA 1.0 Ports, one EIDE (floppy) plug, three USB plugs for front USB, a Firewire plug, and a front audio plug. Cooling is somewhat limited, as the motherboard only provides one 4-pin PWM CPU fan plug, and one 3-pin rear fan plug. Installation of a fan controller will be required to use additional fans. Recently, the 6.05 version of nVidia's System Performance Tools allows minor FSB overclocking, but does not allow voltage or multiplier adjustments, limiting overclocking potential. The case is Micro-ATX sized, lightweight aluminum and features one 92 mm Rear fan, one external 3½" drive bay, two 5¼" bays and two vertical 3½" internal drive bays. It also features a standard ATX sized 300 watt power supply with four SATA plugs, one 24-pin ATX12V 2.0 plug and one 4-pin P4 plug, oddly excluding any standard 4-pin Molex connectors.

The I/O Shield is also part of the case, preventing the installation of third-party motherboards without modifications to the case.


regards

Mike Barnes