Want to upgrade my Dell Dimension 3000, help?
 

Alright, I bought this beast YEARS ago.. Basic Dell Dimension 3000.

I want to upgrade it so it can be a little faster for working... It's all I really do, just thought maybe more memory, new video card, more monitors... maybe bigger hard drive, extra hard drive...

What does everyone suggest? No I'm not getting a new computer... I'm working on upgrading my systems to full blown Apple's but I will still keep this for the fact that it's always been great to me...

Intel(R)
Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
2.99 GHz, 512 MB of RAM

Go visit cheapasslamenerds.com, I'm sure somewhere there will help you out :thumbsup

Awesome, such a great contribution to the community from a great member CunningStunt!

Honestly bump the RAM to at least 2GBs, a bigger HD, and a 512mb or 1GB video card since they're pretty cheap nowadays. Check www.TigerDirect.com.

more memory sure...

just buy a new dell, upgrading is not worth it imo, since a new basic dell is so cheap.

cant believe you are running on 512MB.
upgrading just the RAM will be a huge increase for you.
Go to 2GB....

No point in upgrading the size of your HDD. It sounds like its IDE anyways, so unless you completely replace your HDD with a new SATA one (if the motherboard even supports SATA) changing the size wont gain you any performance.

You could add a good video card for about $100... though, do you have one now or is it just the stock onboard video? If so I would add a new vid card to go along with your new ram.

Other than that, nothing else. Not much else you can do that will be a good value for money and gain on that machine.
More RAM, new video card, and a fresh OS install and that bitch will be blazing. Buy an external drive to backup your files too before the OS reinstall

I second Tidal Waves suggestion. More RAM if you keep the machine and possibly a new video card, other than that - save your money and buy a new machine later.

I'd also go for starting from scratch rather than upgrading. Your motherboard may not support later CPUs such as core2duo and it definitely won't support i7. More RAM should keep you going if you're not ready to buy new just yet, but apart from that I think you should save your $ for something better...

Awesome feedback, thanks man!

To everyone else, I love this machine, yeah 512mb of ram, DUBYA TEE EFF MATE!?!? It has worked fine for me with no problems... All I do is have Firefox, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop open 24/7 doing my work, but usually after 3 days, I gotta kill all the processes and start over due to mostly FF taking up tons of memory...

All I do is program with a little bit of graphics work, so I don't need anything super intense, I just wanted to bump up my ram a bit, and maybe a new video card to add an extra monitor or so... Hard drive is no biggy, I got a 80gb and I usually never go over 60gb before I do my quarterly fresh reformat.

I plan on buying a couple MacBook Pro's and some sweet ass Apple display's to hook up to them to make my main machine, but I've been running this dell for so long, pretty much since I started working online and It's been so great to me I don't wanna just ditch it all together... Even when I get my Macs I'll still throw some server software on her and use her as my local dev server.

I upgraded my Dell Dimension 4400 2 years ago to:

- 1GB RAM ( all that is supported with the stock motherboard... it had 512k when I bought it in 02.
- AGP dual monitor card.
- 200GB HD.
- XP Pro / Ubuntu dual boot.

Not a bad little machine for basic tasks and only a few bucks to upgrade, however now its not my main system ... which is a Dell XPS 420

4GB RAM
1.5TB HD's (Dual 750)
Nividia GE Force card ( Dual monitors)
only part that sucks is Vista OS. I have this set to dual boot Ubuntu as well.
Office 03

Upgrade the Dell ... you'll have it forever .... check out newegg.com for some wicked deals and dont pay for next day shipping as it usually arrives the next day, Newegg has the BEST shipping times period IMHO.

For what it will cost you in Parts ordering, Down time of making the changes and taking care of issues and waiting on other parts etc. Its cheaper to buy one online from Dell or to go to bestbuy.

Why would you upgrade the video card if you aren't going to do any gaming? There is simply no point to it.

Can't really add 2 monitors to a computer with a video card that only supports 1 now can you?

and Pornguy, upgrading ram and the video card should not be so problem, at least not enough to warrant paying another $300 just to "buy a new one" when the one I got works just fine.

I have 2 computers for sale and they would probably blow the doors off that old Dell. Let me know if you want to buy one for $350. I have to make shelf space for the new hotness.

Hi guys, I'm upgrading, if I wanna buy a new machine I'll just take the jump to my Macs right now...