Dell Optiplex, is it worth upgrading?

NiftyDigits

London_Ash wrote: »

Just so you know, Dell will offer you £100 cashback if you trade in for a new machine.

http://www.dell.com/learn/uk/en/ukbsdt1/campaigns/trade-and-save

Not on the list.

NiftyDigits

It's definitely worth upgrading, Just not worth spending a lot of money.

At a minimum, upgrade the RAM to 2GB for £5.99(see below) Takes five minutes.

Update to the latest BIOS. Download and save it from here

Extract the application from the zip file. Once extracted, Run it as Administrator.

To run a program as an administrator in XP

Once complete it will reboot.
Install your OS and Drivers. DELL Reinstallation disc to be found in your Inbox. For Drivers, head to the Intel® Driver Update Utility

At this point it will be fine for general browsing. Certainly worth it for £6.

If you want to tinker and make it more powerful.

CPU: Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E6000 Series

Example: Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E6850 £7.75

RAM: 2 x 1GB £5.99

or

2 x 2GB £20.49


An SSD drive from £30.

So you could spend £5.99 on RAM and £30+ on an SSD.

Even new CPU at perhaps £9(including thermal paste). 4 GB of RAM and an SSD comes in at £60.

The only issue in that machine is that you cannot add a graphics card. For this reason, I would keep the upgrades to purely functional.

So begin with the BIOS update, the clean install and the RAM. Then add whichever of the above you'd like after that.
Still a viable machine.