- Dec 28, 2015
- 4
- 0
- 4,520
Hello everybody. I wanted to ask what potential upgrades I can do to this Inspiron 531 desktop I just recently acquired? It originally had a measly 512 MB of RAM (64 of it was being used by the integrated graphics) and it had a load of Windows 7 with Norton...
It was unbearably slow, so I put a legal copy of 8.1 on it (I used a temporary product key: the ones you can use to get past the install so you can put a real key in later) and it was a bit more responsive, but still very slow.
Speed up to now: I found a spare 1 GB module in my collection of parts, so it now has 1.5 GB of memory to work with and I put an 850 EVO SSD in to replace the old drive it had before. That, and it now has an 8400 GS 1 GB card. It is currently dual-booting XP and Windows 10. XP is very, very fast on this machine. 10 is a bit sluggish (I used the Enterprise LTSB 90 day evaluation which Microsoft offers on their site) but still usable.
I've heard from a few people that this particular machine can go all the way up to 8 GB of RAM. Is this true? I know the CPU on mine is 64 bit capable, so it would make sense, but Dell says it can only go up to 4, yet I've seen various people online saying that it can go up to 8 with no issues. I was thinking of buying this particular RAM here:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00VP5XESO/ref=dp_olp_new_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=new
Since it matches the RAM which is in the computer currently. This is a nice little machine which is very capable, and I'd love to make it even faster!
It was unbearably slow, so I put a legal copy of 8.1 on it (I used a temporary product key: the ones you can use to get past the install so you can put a real key in later) and it was a bit more responsive, but still very slow.
Speed up to now: I found a spare 1 GB module in my collection of parts, so it now has 1.5 GB of memory to work with and I put an 850 EVO SSD in to replace the old drive it had before. That, and it now has an 8400 GS 1 GB card. It is currently dual-booting XP and Windows 10. XP is very, very fast on this machine. 10 is a bit sluggish (I used the Enterprise LTSB 90 day evaluation which Microsoft offers on their site) but still usable.
I've heard from a few people that this particular machine can go all the way up to 8 GB of RAM. Is this true? I know the CPU on mine is 64 bit capable, so it would make sense, but Dell says it can only go up to 4, yet I've seen various people online saying that it can go up to 8 with no issues. I was thinking of buying this particular RAM here:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00VP5XESO/ref=dp_olp_new_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=new
Since it matches the RAM which is in the computer currently. This is a nice little machine which is very capable, and I'd love to make it even faster!
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