I was recently given a Dell Inspiron 546 as a present, so, I had minimal input in terms of customization, nor even the model. It seems to be decent, but am wondering what it is currently capable of [In terms of gaming etc.] and if needed, does it have space for upgrades. The specs I post will be a bit crude seeing as how it has yet to arrive and my source of hardware specs is an invoice. Please excuse me for such. Inspiron 546 Minitower, Black Bezel Inspiron 546 AMD Phenom X4 9650 (2.3GHz, 2MB) 6GB DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 2X2GB+2X1GB ATI Radeon HD 4350 512MB 750GB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200RPM Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Comments on specs and previously mentioned points appreciated. ~Manny~
minitowers are worrying, as they tend to be somewhat lacking in the ventilation department. The graphics chip is fairly new, but it is an entry level one I believe, and ATi cards are badly let down by their useless unstable drivers, although using the omega drivers can help with that. The Creative X-Fi series are known to have problems in high powered computers, whether yours is high powered enough to cause issues I wouldn't like to say (its caused by too much data travelling across the PCI bus) So long as you wipe it and reinstall from scratch (not using the dell supplied discs) to remove all the crap dell preload onto their computers, and you also forget any ideas of ever upgrading anything except the disk and ram, its an OK machine.
Would it be possible to pass the parts over into a full-sized tower? And what would I be able to achieve with it gaming wise? Also, would you consider it worth-while to upgrade to the latest version of the Windows 7 RC once it arrives?
it might be, it might not be. Dell often use custom parts (especially the PSU/motherboard). Gaming wise it should run most stuff, but possibly not the absolute latest. I would not advise upgrading to non-final software, I would suggest waiting until it is released (and SP1 is also released).
Thanks for the help Loony. Also, on a side note, is the difference between a video card with DDR3 ram as opposed to DDR2 big?
