Chosen Solution

Looking at upgrading the RAM, video card, hard drive, etc. Just looking at getting my PC up to scratch instead of buying a whole new PC. Anybody have any suggestions?

This may seem a little odd answering my own question, but here is the bottom line. It was not worth upgrading the Dell Inspiron 530s. I really leaned heavy on irish420311 suggestion on replacing the HHD for a SSD and adding RAM. I believe that this would have held up for awhile and worked just fine. However, after much research of upgrading vs buying a new PC. I found a third option of building a PC, which in the end is what I chose. I believe that building my own PC will prove to be something I can continually upgrade and repair without having to buy a whole new PC every so often. Therefore keeping up with the essence of reducing electronic waste and repairing what I have over the long run. Also, if you have an old PC that you want to rid yourself of, instead of pitching it to the curb or selling it. Consider donating it to your local high school or vocational college for another generation to learn on!

I believed I maxed out the available upgradability of my 530s.

  1. CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33Ghz $24
  2. Memory: 8GB (DDR2 PC2-5300) $30
  3. Hard drive: C: 530GB SSD, D: 4TB Hybrid $250
  4. 3D Video: MSI GTX 1050 TI 4GT 4GB GDDR5 $200
  5. PCI: 4 Port PCI SuperSpeed USB 3.0 $30
  6. PSU: 300w Second* external PSU (Slimline Power Supply Upgrade for SFF ) $22 *Yes, I wired a external PSU to add to the primary internal power supply. There were no available high power PSU that will fit the slimline case. There are claims that they are 300w but I highly doubt it. I bought one of this and mounted it externally. It supplied the CPU 12v P4 header to the motherboard, the 2 hard drives, and the DVD burner. The internal PSU basically supplied the video card and the motherboard. The 2 most expensive upgrades are the video card and the SSD drives, which Im still going to have to spend upgrading for a refurb or mid-level $400 dell. The upgrade, in my opinion, was worth it since I get to keep everything I had (OS Windows 7 Ultimate and apps) and didnt have to deal with transferring and setting it up. I also slowly did the upgrade in a span of 2 months. This is my second /backup workstation. I can now play all my Blizz games and 4K video editing with PowerDirector 16.

I think that this one will be difficult to upgrade the video card, but I suppose you could upgrade the RAM and hard drive and see a good bit of more performance if you get a Sold State Drive and max out the RAM, luckily I think the RAM is cheap for this PC, I think you will need PC2-5300 or 6400, it will run windows 7 fine with max RAM and a SSD, but I’m not certain about windows 8 or 10, only thing that will be holding you back will be the processor and I’m not sure what kind you have, more than likely a core 2 duo around 2.5GHz, and if so then I would stay at windows 7 Although you can find up to date Dell PC’s for around 300-400$ that will work for at least 5 years, make sure you get the mid-tower or larger so if you do want to upgrade the video card later you will be able to