Looking for some upgrade advice - Dell 4600

[kazmi]

Hi!

I'm new here and this is my first post here, so forgive me if I mess up - but I promise to learn quickly!!

I have a Dell Dimension 4600 for the past 2 years and it works fine. But I am now realizing that I want to upgrade the memory (RAM) and the hard drive too. I mainly use it for home use and some light gaming (Medal of Honor,Brain Lara Cricket,nothing too cutting edge). I would like to be able to just be able to have more memory and maybe able to play some newer games once in a while - but the priority is the memory and hard drive upgrade.

I gather that crucial.com is a good place to get the correct memory, but I read that I can only upgrade in doubles....so if I need to upgrade to a 1 GB of RAM, I basically can't? Is my interpretation correct?

And second, I have called Dell and searched over their site, but I cannot seem to find what kind of a hard drive I can use to replace my original one with( SATA or IDE?)? Part b of this question would be, can I add another HDD to the original one and use both to maybe give me a combined boost in storage?

My computer's specs :

Pentium 4 2.8GHz with 533MHz FSB
512MB Dual Channel DDR SD RAM @ 333MHz
Integrated Intel extreme graphics 2 ( I think I will need a real video card soon)
40 GB Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive (7200 RPM)

Kindly please do let me know if I have left something out.

Thanks in advance.

Kaz.

[doctorgonzo]

Yes, you can add another hard drive and use two.

According to the specs, you do have SATA on that board, so you could either get a SATA drive or an PATA drive. To make sure you have SATA ports, look at the motherboard for connectors like these.

That board offers dual-channel memory. You have 512 MB installed already, probably in a configuration of two 256 MB sticks. You have two more slots available, so you could buy another two 256 MB sticks to get the full gigabyte of memory; however, this could cause the memory to slow down slightly, or it may not work at all.

What I would do is buy two 512 MB sticks if you want a total of 1 GB, then install those. Then you can try adding the old 256 MB sticks to see if they will work; if so, great, if not, just sell them.

[David M]

Cruicial is a great place to figure out what RAM is suitable for your computer. Ideally, you want two matched sticks of RAM for dual channel but it not a necessity to have matched RAM for the RAM to work in most cases. See if you can find a match to your existing 512 stick of RAM. Unfortunatly, you are not going to find the best deals on RAM through Dell.

Increasing your RAM from 512 to 1 Gig will probably make somewhat of a difference but it will not make a significant difference for gaming. Gaming framerates are mostly a function of your graphics card.

Have you considered an external hard drive connected through your USB port? It is not as fast but if all you use it for is long term storage and you do not need fast access times then it should work out fine. You will want to have USB 2 to do this.

[nickdahl]

I upgraded my Dell 4600 recently. Here's what I did:

1. Added a second internal hard drive. It was easy. I used a 250GB Western Digital drive.

2. Added more memory. I have 3GB of RAM now: 2 1GB sticks and 2 512MB sticks.

3. Added a video card. My motherboard uses an AGP slot, so I installed a GeForce 600GT card.

Now, the computer's pretty powerful.

Nick

[jayb1234]

Dell has a habit of using proprietary RAM on some of it's machines, so make sure that you use a configurator to get the right part number.

[blue60007]

Don't quote me, but I've used generic RAM in that Dell and the RAM from it in a generic motherboard, but you'd still need to double check with a configurator.

You are going to be limited somewhat with what video you can put in there, as the one I had just had a 250W power supply.

[nicolaus corelius]

he doesnt really care about vid card, but in any case u could check to see if the PSU is propriaitary.

[glc]

A 4600 uses a standard ATX PSU.

If you read more closely, he said he thinks he needs a real video card soon, nicolaus. It would be advisable to beef the PSU up to do that. The onboard graphics, even though it's not too bad, definitely does hold back gaming performance. I have a friend with a 845G board, we found out that even an old Radeon 7200 with 32mb ram gamed better than the onboard.

[danky]

Im almost scared to post due to GLC being on my case for suggesting components. If you are possibly going to get a new PSU, video card, as well as adding a new hard drive, and more ram, you might want to ask yourself if its worth it.

Were living in an age where computers are getting so out-dated its unbelievable. In my household, weve been buying new every 2-3 years. So maybe if you wanted or could afford a new PC, you might want to go that way. Im sure all of us here can help you put together a new/budget computer.

EDIT-- I halfly take back what i said, i just looked at your post again, and your running a 2.8ghz CPU. I thought it said 1.8. :-\ silly me lol. But its still something to look at. Sorry again.

[glc]

Even a 1.8 GHz Dell would be worth upgrading. Dells use decent quality components, it's not like it's a cheap piece of junk to begin with.