HoosierDaddy

Any techies out there who could help me? My 5 year old Dell PC only has 128mb RAM and I want to find the easiest and cheapest way to improve its performance (preferably to 1GB).
Best Buy has some Kingston 1gb card for $90.00

Is this a good deal (providing it is compatible) and is it easy enough for me to install?

Cheers.

Jerseygirl

There's a new forum now for techi stuff.

Duncan Roberts

Installing is a piece of piss. Just take off the cover, press down on the memory release, whip out the old and stick in the new. You just have to be careful that it's all grounded so you don't spark the whole thing out. Personally, i would not even bother with places like best buy, go direct from crucial.com. THey make, in my opinion, some of the most reliable and efficient memory on the market and they guarantee that it will be compatible with your machine. It's also a pretty good price. They also have step by step (with pictures) instructions if you need them.

Check how many slots your machine has and how many it's using. You might find that you can use your old memory as well as some new. You also might find that you need to buy it in pairs depending on what type of memory your motherboard can accept. The crucial website has an advisor so you can stick in all your computer details and it will only show you compatible modules.

Bob

As mentioned, it's a piece of piss to stick in.

But, only get as fast as your motherboard can handle as it'll be a waste of money, stick up what your Dell is and I'm sure someone could find out the mobo spec to let you know.

Good places to get memory - www.newegg.com and Tiger are good, but mare return policy.

Brands, well you don't have to be snooty, it won't make much difference to the average joe tbh, you'll only honest the difference on high end apps when you really use all the memory, but if you have the choice, Kingston, Viking, Crucial, Corrsair...there all solid brands.

The stuff about EEC...don't bother with it....your old memory...depends on the speed of it, if it's anything less than PC2700, chuck it as it'll slow your system down because the memory will run at the speed of the slowest that you have, and anything slower will bottleneck, PC2100 ain't that crap, but you won't find it as cheap as 2700 these days...

Ray

Five years old ..... Time to spend on a new one ....

HoosierDaddy

Bob - Thanks for the note. It is a Dell DIM2300, 4CPU 1.80GHz with 128MB as stated.

Ray - I can't stretch the finances for a newie, but I appreciate the advice.

ScousePete

I just bought some memory for my laptop and found this company http://www.18004memory.com/ had the best prices, fast (and free) shipping and quality product. Adding the memory made an incredible difference to the performance.

It's a piece of cake to install.

Duncan Roberts

My mum has one of those. You have 2 slots so you will need to get rid of your old for sure, I'm also pretty sure you have a 1GB max memory capacity with 512mb max for each slot so will need to get 2x512mb modules if you want to upgrade to 1GB. That machine takes 168-pin, PC133 non DDR SDRAM. Unfortunately for you, that's not the most common type so wont be as cheap as it could be. I would budget around 140-170 for 1GB total, or 80-100 for 512 total. I still stick by my crucial recommendation, I've used crucial in machines for 10 years or so without a problem. If I was going to build another system, that would be my memory of choice. Plus they do a 30 day money back guarantee.

nai_in_av

Agreed. I would save the money you are planning on spending on memory and put it towards a new PC. The money you are going to spend on memory alone ($100+ for 1GB) is well on the way to a new PC.

Duncan Roberts

It could go either way. If you want to play the latest games and do graphic/movie stuff, then a new computer is the way to go. If you are happy with the software you are using and just want some more speed, upgrading the memory is a better option. 128mb to 1gb will give you a pretty noticeable speed boost.

Bob

PC133 SDRAM that's the memory speed you can have, non-ecc...so should be cheap, should be okay, not fab though I'm afraid...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ice=&maxPrice=

$46 for OEM, $55 for the same memory that ain't OEM. 512MB stick.

You'll find your a bit limited on what you can get for your memory these days.

Bob

It's not like it's a crap CPU or system though, and just for casual user that browses the web and does emails and the odd letter, it's more than enough, hell a P3 650 could do that quite well, so it's not really a need to flog the system.

If used for gaming, or serious multi-tasking, then yeah, it's well worth chucking, but not everyone needs that kind of power to fire up solitaire.

On the plus to an upgrade, would save a fair bit on the lecky bill as the newer chips do use a lot less juice, and also put out a lot less heat, but again, unless your stressing the CPU, you ain't really going to notice any difference.

dan_alford

Unless you are trying to run Vista solitaire, in which case you will need dual core cpu,4GB memory and quad SLI graphics

Bob

and a mcmansion to stick the puter in

sambuc

Go to costco or sams, buy a new PC or laptop, take it back every 6 months for an upgrade........................................... .........

Never be out of date again