BleepingComputer.com: Upgrade Dell Dimension 5100

Hi, As you can see I have a Dell Dimension 5100.I am into photography & would like to upgrade 1 or 2 parts, I have Adobe Photoshop installed (Uses a lot of memory etc) with at this time an external USB H/D as the scratch disk I want to place an additional H/D internally (SATA) & remove the external USB H/D (not SATA) do I just plug it in, switch on sit back & wait for windows to find it (I have replaced a H/D in an old machine but not a SATA) also can someone give me an idea of the upgrade to a Radeon X300 for this Dell? There are 2 cards installed on this system (as it came from Dell)
Oh there is 1028 ram installed as stander ed again by Dell.
Many Thanks in advance
Russell.

Adding in a new hard drive should work exactly as you described, even if it's SATA. Just hook it up to your motherboard using a SATA cable, and plug the SATA power connector from your motherboard to the hard drive. Once you turn on your computer, give windows a couple minutes and it should detect it. You'll have to format the drive also, but windows should prompt you to do this.

Do you mean you want to upgrade to an ATI X300 graphics card? If so, what card do you have now?

If you notice you're computer running kind of sluggish, upgrading to 2gb or 3gb of ram would probably help out too.

Hi. There are two graphics card installed Radeon X300 these I would like to upgrade but as you point out maybe increase of memory would help make it run faster & memory is cheaper option I hope lol.

Increasing the RAM...as suggested...would seem to be a smarter use of money...if you are trying to improve/optimize your use of Photoshop.

If you need increased storage, the SATA drive is a good choice, if your PS and motherboard support SATA.

Louis

Sorry Gents but now I am a bit confused because I looked at crucial did the scan and got this Each memory slot can hold DDR2 PC2-5300,DDR2 PC2-4200,DDR2 PC2-6400,DDR2 PC2-8500 with a maximum of 2GB per slot now I think I understand that I need DDR2 but there seems to be differant types and it means absoulutlt nothing to me, can you pleasde advise.
Again Thank you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR2_SDRAM See Chips and Modules section.

First of all...make sure that you looked at the right model at Crucial. I see that there is also a 5100C model for Dell Dimension...you need to make sure that you don't have that model...or that both models take the same memory. I just checked, both take the same memory.

Different types are different speeds, with the system always running at the lowest speed which is installed.

DDR2 PC-4200 is the slowest module which your system supports, while PC-8500 is the fastest.

DDR2 is dirt cheap these days. If I were buying I would just buy two 2GB modules of whatever happens to be cheaper (from those categories listed) on that day, at that moment. The 4GB package of PC-4200 for $67 is what I would go with, regardless of operating system now or current system configuration.

Louis

Hi Againnnnnnnnn
OK I have purchased 4GB ram 2X 2GB so one question remains (I Hope) when I install it is it better to remove the two 512 sticks and put the new ram in the 1st two slots and the 512 in the last slots or do away with the 512 and get a couple 1GB instead?
Again Thank You

If you are running XP...there's no point in putting more than 4GB of RAM into the system, 4GB is the max XP will use.

If you are running Vista, put in all you have.

Check your motherboard/system manual to see what the configurations are (if any) for running dual-channel mode.

Louis