So, I want to update my Dell!

Cruix

Okay, here's the deal.

Usually I always build my computers myself -- but as it would happen my computer died on me about a year ago. Being away at college, I needed a computer fast and just got myself a Dell Inspiron 531.

It worked out well enough since I've been busy, but now I want to get back into playing games on my PC! So, I'm looking for some upgrades.

The stats on the Inspiron 531 as it came:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5600+ Processor
NVIDIA Geforce 8300 GS
2 Gigs of DD2 RAM

All in a Micro ATX case, and I'm going to say the rest is fairly unimportant to this.

Now, since then I've put in an extra 2GB of RAM, but haven't changed anything else. I'm looking to put in a new video card -- does anyone have any suggestions? I have a bit of cash to spare at the moment, but don't want to spend more than $200 on a video card -- I was looking at the Geforce GTX 260 currently.

I'll also be upgrading the PSU (currently 300W) to a 600W one when I upgrade the video card. So, I'm looking for suggestions for a video card and any other suggestions, if there's anything else on the system I need to change? I've been out of the PC building game for too long and now I'm just left confused.

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can give!

grrarg

If this picture matches your case, a 260 is too long to fit in there without cutting away some of the metal in the front of the case.

Cruix

grrarg wrote: »

If this picture matches your case, a 260 is too long to fit in there without cutting away some of the metal in the front of the case.

Yeah, that's the case. I was worried about that, but I'd been looking and had seen a couple of people say they were able to fit a 260 in the 531 case as long as there was only one HDD in there.

Anyway, hopefully there'll be some suggestions for a comparable card that's not quite so large if that's the case!

PeregrineFalcon

ATI HD4850 should probably fit, a 4870 might as well.

KiTA

I have a Insp 531, it rocks. I threw in 4 gigs of RAM and a Radeon card, and it runs anything I throw at it.

I bought this PSU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182030

And this video card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814103050

The default PSU is really underpowered and you don't want it. It also is missing a PCIE connector. Fortunately the Dell Insp 531 (and, I believe but cannot confirm, all the Inspirons and Vostros after the 531) use standard PSUs. So just swap it out.

The card is a really tight fit. I could fit a HDD above it but it required some scraping of the plastic on that card's fan. Not a huge consideration (I eventually just moved the second HDD to my 3.5 floppy slot) but you might want to think about it.

Heat may be an issue, it wasn't for me until I forgot to check for dust this year. This PSU is the one I'm replacing that other one with due to the rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341016

logic7

be careful when upgrading the PSU. Dell was once notorious for using oddball pinout on their connectors. In some cases, off-the-shelf PSU's simply won't work(my Dimension 8200 refuses to power up with a "standard" 400W PSU instead of a Dell supplied 250W unit). In others you can fry the motherboard (old P3 XPS-T's were like this).

Make sure you can really use a standard ATX PSU in that machine first.