Compatibility Questions

Short time before heading out to check out the cemetery area for my father. Trying to keep busy for now, was looking at replacement parts for a Dell inspiron 530s. Mainly Ram/Memory sticks and Internal HDD's.

The ones from dells site were said to work for that machines specific service tag. But was looking else where to see if i can find anything better, or a better deal. Issue being i need to make sure any products else where are still compatible.

Dell Memory Stick
The one i found that seemed like it might work as well was Newegg Memory Stick. Spec wise they seemed the same. But its kinda hard to focus properly atm'

This was the Dell HDD. But i didn't rly see any other good alternatives.

Any help would be appreciated

how many ram slots are on that thing?

do you want to throw a ssd in there? what are you trying to do with this thing?

also if you want to put more than 1 hdd and the built in optical you may need to upgrade the psu, as the stock ones suck hardcore.

4 slots.
i was just looking to replace the hdd that's in there. So i would only be having one that's actually hooked up to use.
Would there be any benefit to to using a ssd over a hdd in this case?

speed, but not sure if it would be worth it on such an old system.

looks like you can upgrade to a max of 4gb of ram, so 4x 1GB sticks of ddr2.

240pin.

cnet's specs say that anyway, they make 2gb sticks of that type of ram, but not sure if the 2gb sticks would work in that model, probably not.

1.8v is what you're looking for.

a quick amazon search says you can get that for $60. I probably wouldn't spend that on it.

As far as the hdd, any 3.5" sata hard drive will suffice, but I'd stick with at least 7200 rpm.

its amusing to see it refereed to as 'such an old system.' The one ive been playing ff11 on these last several years is much older then that lol.

the second memory stick linked too up top is a 1gb(x2) 240pin but its listed at 1.9v tho :/ Would that effect it much being a slight over voltage and not under?

it should be within tolerance tbh, but personally I'd stick with a 1.8.

I wouldn't buy from dell, that's for sure.

and yeah, it's old. DDR3 has been out for a few years now.

XI isn't a good comparison as it's even older...

yea i guess that's true. But im not looking to play any new games or anything atm so im not to worried about it.

Found two more memory stick options. Both are similar. 1g sticks, 240 pin, 1.8v. Only diff i see other then brand/price is the Mushkin is PC2 6400 where as all the others (including that dell one) were PC2 5300.

Corsair
Muskin

I'd personally prefer corsair over muskin, but for an old system, whatevs. I'd definitely try to get 6400 though, faster the ram the better. But if the motherboard doesn't support that speed, it's irrelevant, I don't remember now, but I'm pretty sure it said it only goes up to 5300.

If you're limited to 2 slots, get 2gb sticks.

Not rly sure how to check the motherboards limit. Thats one piece ive never had to work with before (since i never had any problems with them.)
But if the MB didn't support 6400 and in-fact only went to 5300, what would happen if you put a 6400 in there anyway? Would it still only operate up to 5300 or not work all together?

I'm leaning towards the Corsair product in regards to performance/quality. But i also cant ignore the Mushkin at half the price. :/
With the system have 4 slots, corsair at $30 a stick vs mushkin at $35 for two sticks is note worthy. Of course it wouldn't do any good if mushkin didnt work being 6400 or just that poor a quality item.

edit: also found this. Crucial. Looks to be the same specs as the Corsair one.
There scan tool also showed what i had assumed. a 4gb limit for both system and OS. So 4gb/4slots

i ended up getting 4 x1gb memory sticks for the system. I plugged them all in, but its reading at 3.25gb ram?

then you have a 32bit OS, it will do that.

edit: just saw the other post: 6400 should turn itself back to 5300, but I've never tried it.

edit2: a box like that should be able to handle a 64bit OS.