I have a older dell dim 4500s, i know i need upgrade my memory. I probably wont be buying a new pc soon so I would like to upgrade this one a little bit to keep up with the jones. it only has 256 of ram and not sure on the HD. Should I consider buying a new HD or what??? i know the pc can handle up to 1 gig of ram, will it run faster after I install an extra 512 of ram?? it also has win xp and I hear that needs atleast 512 to run ok. after the pc being on a while it starts to run real slow. LMK what ya think and buying a new pc right now is out of the question. if anyone has some pc parts for my pc let me know. i will post my specs in a little bit
System Configuration
Manufacturer: Dell
Family: Dimension
Model: 4500
Speed: PC-2100
Fixed RAM: 0MB
Standard RAM: 256MB
Banks: 2
Maximum RAM: 1GB
Sockets: 2
Chipset: Intel 845E
Throw a gig of ram at it, flash the bios, reinstall the os.
Get a good disk defragmenter program, keep it optimized.
Those things have like a p4 1.8ghz in them right?
Not bad, certainly fast enough for most purposes.
im pretty sure that flashing the bios on a dell its a bit more involved then on a standard motherboard.
just upgrade to a gig of ram and u will love life
cool, u guys suggest new egg???
Turbo, NoS, Wing.
flashing bios on dell is crazy easy.
what do you want to be able to do with the machine. Upgrading piecewise may be less “profitable” than a new system.
Reformat and get some more memory. Go dual channel if you can.
That tells me that there’s all sorts of crap running in the background. A fresh install of windows will probably give you the best gains.
Don’t flash your bios. Too risky for minimal gains. (If you fuck it up you need a new motherboard.) You don’t need more than a gig of memory anyways.
i have an E6300 core2 duo and intel board still sealed… if anyone wants to build a new rig 
pm price, although its most likely out of my range
You have a program with a memory leak, things like weatherbug, Aim triton and other moronic programs are poorly written and have memory leaks. find them and destroy them
download more ram and stop haxrs from stealing your megahurts by firewalling it with leet bricks
those p4 chips run really hot… open up the case and get a spray bottle… when its running slow, give it a few mists. Heat is your worst enemy
Onoes I’ve lost my megahurtz. I’s sorriez plz 2 geiv back? 
The biggest issue is having a lot of shit running in the background based on the it goes slower the longer I use it comment.
More memory will definatly help if you open several programs up. But if you have nothing running or are just using the internet. All 256MB shouldn’t be in use.
Also for a safe and easy way that will help a bit without being worrisome for computer noobs such as yourself. Granted it misses a lot of details, but it’s enough to help.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/maintain/improveperf.mspx
Obviously reformatting, and more memory will offer the best performance gains overall. But at the very least toss some more memory and follow the above.
cool thanks guys. hopefully next year Ill drop some loot on a mad leet laptop or desktop
More ram.
or if you wanted to get really crazy in addition you could get a PCI SATA card and run a raptor hard drive.
16mb cache and 10k RPMs FTW,but that would cost around $175 .
he would never notice the difference in the raptor… not worth the 175 bucks