Dell Inspiron 530 upgrade

[qsmith]

Hello,

I have an old Dell inspiron 530 pc which i would like to upgrade. Please bare in mind this is my first PC upgrade and I am not very familiar with PC hardware.

I want to upgrade the processor, add more ram and a new graphic card.

Currrently I have:

Inter Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz
4 GB of Ram
32 bit windows 8.

Thanks for reading

 

[clutchc]

You'll need to log into Dell support with your Service Tag or other product ID. Then check which CPUs are supported by your motherboard. I suspect you are near the top right now. Possibly one of the later Q9xxx quad cores for a small bump in performance. All obsolete now and will have to be found used.

RAM should be easy enough to upgrade. Get a matched pair equal to the specs of the RAM you have now.

The best gfx card you can use will be determined by the PSU your system has. If it is the standard 300W - 350W, I'd suggest the GTX 1050 Ti.

 

[Blackink]

Careful on the ram upgrade, your motherboard may not be able to handle more than 4GB's regardless of the OS (32Bit vs. 64Bit) you install or how much physical ram you try and put in.

There were 5 different models of that motherboard. Depending on which model you have, you can only have 4GB's, some models allow 8GB's.

See page 110 of the owner's manual. You can download that at Dell's support site after you enter your service code. Look for "Manuals" on the left side of the page.
You'll have to open your case to identify what mobo you have, then scroll through the pictures of the different models in the owners manual to identify which model you have.

Then page 179 list which models maximum memory is: 4GB or 8GB.

Myself, I've installed a Samsung 250GB EVO SSD with Windows 7 Pro 64Bit in my Dell 530 Inspiron with a mobo that only supports 4GB Ram....Grrrrr.....!

I just installed a GT 610 EVGA graphics card so I can run dual monitors connected via DVI-I.

So far so good. Everything is running smoothly.