General Hardware

Re: upgrade dell dimension 8300

shesagordie — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:34:16 GMT

capal

For a system as old as the 8300, it may not be worth the cost of the upgrade, it maybe better to put the money towards a new system.

The installed 3.06GHz processor, could be upgraded to a Socket 478, 3.4 GHz Northwood, but it's not worth the cost for such a small upgrade.

Dimension 8300 PC's use DDR memory, the maximum is 4gb [4 x 1gb modules]. To find the compatible memory for your 8300, go to HERE.

Note: the 8300 DDR memory needs to be installed in matching pairs, for maximum performance.

The 8300 supports AGP Video cards, that can be found HERE

Bev.

Re: upgrade dell dimension 8300

capal — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:13:39 GMT

EJN63, Thanks, What would be the best components to upgrade, to make it faster? Any suggestion to put the old machine to it's maximum use? Thanks, M

Re: upgrade dell dimension 8300

ejn63 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:07:55 GMT

Neither will work. The 8300 is one of the last AGP systems - it will not take the newer PCI Express video card type. Neither will any Core-based CPU work - they will not even fit the socket on the system.

You're better off buying or building a new system - while you COULD replace the case, power supply, and mainboard - you will also need a new, retail copy of Windows, all new RAM, and you'll likely find it difficult to re-use your older IDE drive(s) on a newer system.

upgrade dell dimension 8300

capal — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:41:53 GMT

I have the following:

December 86 Intel Pentium 4 Processor 3.06GHz

Dimension 8300 3.0GHz/800 Intergrated Sound and NIC

1024MB DDR400 Dual Channel Memory (2x512)

I would like to upgrade the

1) video card to

XFX PVT96OZDFU GeForce 9600 GSO 1GB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150340

2) CPU to

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33GHz 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor

3) How much memory can I upgrade to (max)

Will be glad if someone with experience could tell me if the upgrades will be compatible.

Many thanks,

Michael