Yeah, well I've just been given a Dell E521 by a friend. I can't fault a free PC, but I'm not content with its specs. It has two 512MB sticks of DDR2 PC4200 memory and I was looking to switch them for some performance modules but I'm not sure if the motherboard is compatiable with higher "PC" numbers. The Dell website doesn't give much information so I was wondering if you guys could help. Could I for example, swap these for a 2GB Cosair performance set and see the benefits? Or is the motherboard only limited to PC4200?
Lucky get! It depends on the CPU and whether or not it will make good use of it. Added to that is if you'll notice the difference. Moving up to more RAM will always help though - regardless of speed. Anything the same speed or faster than what's in there will work if it's definately DDR2. So yeah, what's the processor?
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor - could be better but anything's an improvement on my trusty Athlon-M 2500+ and for £0, you can't go wrong. Thanks a lot, I just needed confirmation before I order the gear.
Nice! Yeah - faster modules will work fine. Not sure what BIOs is on the motherboard - so can't guess what the speed improvements will be. But as said, bigger the better!
faster ram will just underclock itself to whatever your board will support.. plus, if you decide to upgrade the mobo later on, you wont have to upgrade your ram!