Inspiron 530, to upgrade or not to upgrade

[Storm1]

Hello, my wife has an Inspiron 530a, moboG33M02, her computer is about as slow as molasses in January. Right now things are tight on the budget side of life. My question is, is it worth, possible, probable to upgrade this dino?

 

[C12Friedman]

Welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums,
Upgrading may be a possibility but my approach here might be to spend some time cleaning the computer, both physically and softwarely. To clean it physically, first unplug computer from the wall, open the case and blow out the inside with compressed air paying particular attention to the heatsinks and fans. Be careful when cleaning it physically.
To clean it 'softwarely', this guide should get you far in increasing the speed back to how it was when new http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/8263-63-simple-free-guide-removing-malware
Something also to consider is that the hard drive may be getting full (more than 70% capacity) which can slow down your system a bit, defragging the hard drive may also help. Another possibly is adding an additional hard drive - better yet a small SSD (say 128GB or less) to which your operating system can be copied to may bring you some speed without any further changes - like this one which comes with data copying software (I would personally only transfer the operating system to the SSD or use it as a cache drive) Crucial M4 2.5" 64GB SATA III for $82. Note that some shopping around may yield better prices.
My $0.02

 

[Kisianik]

Can you provide more info about your 530a, such as OS, is it 32 bit or 64 bit, you RAM (memory) and CPU (processor).
The easiest way to do so is to get CPUZ http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
In addition to cleaning, your system could be speed up by using cheaper upgrades compare to adding SSD. Also, CPU could be upgraded. There are a lot of possibilities, but we need to know your original configuration.
I really like upgrading Inspirons, so help us to help you.

 

[Kisianik]

Just found additional info, your motherboard supports up to Core 2 Duo e8600, so what do you have now. And RAM which can be upgraded up to 8 GB (the 1.0.18 bios update is required).