Question Dell Desktop

[Hokeywolf]

I have a Dell 3847. Born with W-8 and now has W-10. It has two sticks of memory at 4 GB each. It boots and loads rather slowly, but once it gets all loaded, it runs along just fine. I wondered if more memory might help it "get up and go" a little quicker? What would you recommend? I thought a couple of 8 GB sticks would do giving a total of 16 GB.

My second question has to do with my other PC. A Lenovo K330 with W-7. It has one stick at 8 GB and three more at 2 GB each for a total of 14 GB. This machine works just fine. Is it true that is the memory sticks are different GB's the machine will run at the speed of the smallest one? Thanks

 

[drivinfast247]

I have a Dell 3847. Born with W-8 and now has W-10. It has two sticks of memory at 4 GB each. It boots and loads rather slowly, but once it gets all loaded, it runs along just fine. I wondered if more memory might help it "get up and go" a little quicker? What would you recommend? I thought a couple of 8 GB sticks would do giving a total of 16 GB.

My second question has to do with my other PC. A Lenovo K330 with W-7. It has one stick at 8 GB and three more at 2 GB each for a total of 14 GB. This machine works just fine. Is it true that is the memory sticks are different GB's the machine will run at the speed of the smallest one? Thanks

A ssd would be the best bet for a little more speed out of that dinosaur.

And in regards to the second question; yes, for the most part.

 

[Eximo]

Memory is cheap, so adding it won't be too costly. But yes, if you are still on a hard drive, that is the main thing keeping the system from starting up quickly.

Just consider that you can get used whole desktops with 16GB or more of memory, relatively cheaply.

 

[Bob.B]

I have a Dell 3847. Born with W-8 and now has W-10. It has two sticks of memory at 4 GB each. It boots and loads rather slowly, but once it gets all loaded, it runs along just fine. I wondered if more memory might help it "get up and go" a little quicker? What would you recommend? I thought a couple of 8 GB sticks would do giving a total of 16 GB.

My second question has to do with my other PC. A Lenovo K330 with W-7. It has one stick at 8 GB and three more at 2 GB each for a total of 14 GB. This machine works just fine. Is it true that is the memory sticks are different GB's the machine will run at the speed of the smallest one? Thanks

Free stuff for the dell.

Install the proper bios and drivers.
Make the startup group skinny.
Uninstall unneeded stuff.
Run a pass of defrag.

 

[Misgar]

Is it true that is the memory sticks are different GB's the machine will run at the speed of the smallest one?

It's generally the speed of the slowest stick that determines the speed of the machine's memory bus, not the DIMM(s) with the lowest number of GB. You might have a fast 2GB stick and a slow 8GB stick.

This assumes the BIOS is capable of working its way through 4 dissimilar DIMMs and choosing the slowest timings for stability. You might be running one or more DIMMs faster than designed, if the BIOS selects timings from the first stick it encounters.

I wondered if more memory might help it "get up and go" a little quicker?

You already have 8GB which might be "enough" RAM if you don't run any really big programs. To check if you need more RAM, open Windows Task Manager, then open Resource Monitor and click on the Memory tab. Look at the Hard faults/s column and run a few programs. If you see hundreds of Hard faults and Task Manager shows the CPU at 100%, you need more RAM. If not, it's debatable that 16GB will make a huge difference.

If you decide to install more RAM, check the capacities are supported by the Dell and Lenovo. It would be a pity to buy a 16GB kit only to find it's not supported by the computer BIOS.

As others have said, by far the best upgrade to speed up an old computer is to fit a modern SATA SSD. You can clone your existing hard disk (Windows OS +programs + data) over to a SATA SSD, then unplug the hard disk and boot from the SSD. Much faster.
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

If your hard disk is 500GB, buy a 500GB SSD. If the hard disk is 1TB, a 1TB SSD would probably be a better option. 2.5" (laptop drive size) SATA SSDs are cheap these days and a splendid update for a slow hard disk. SSDs come in various capacities from 120GB to 4TB+. Do not buy a modern M.2 drive by mistake. Old computers don't have an M.2 slot.