Digital Archaeology: Dell Inspiron 531s

about 4 hours ago

The Dell Inspiron 531S is a slimline desktop. Dell made several models of a similar design in both Intel and AMD varieties. This particular one has a Athlon 64 X2 5000+. The Intel models (Core 2 duo based) used the 530s model designation. Hardware specs of this one include:

CPU: Athlon 64 X2 5000+ @ 2.6 GHz
Memory: 3 GB DDR2 @ 800 MHz
Video: GeForce 6150LE

For more complete specs, check out the HardInfo report.

When this desktop was contemporary, this CPU was reasonably fast. the GeForce 6150LE is part of the chipset and for an integrated solution, it was pretty good for the time but if you wanted to do gaming, you would still need a discrete GPU.

The 3GB of RAM was pretty typical for the time. The reason being that, despite the fact that most CPUs were 64-bit by this time, Windows and most apps and drivers were still primarily 32-bit. This machine shipped with Windows Vista. There was a 64-bit version of Vista but most OEM PCs shipped with the 32-bit version. By the time 64-bit drivers for more devices were widely available, I think things were already moving on to Windows 7. Vista was not very popular.

The fastest officially supported CPU on this machine is the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ which runs at 3.1 GHz (Socket AM2). This would be a modest upgrade with, very roughly, a 20% increase in performance. More significant upgrades would be the addition of a discrete GPU and an SSD. Moving up to 4GB would be helpful too.

Given the small size and limited power supply, the GPU selection will be limited. Something like a GT 1030 or some other card that doesn't require an external power connection would be the best card that would work for this machine. It would have to be a low profile card with associated low profile bracket. This would still be a massive improvement over the integrated video.

This machine has an issue that I haven't been able to work out yet. When ever I move the window for the BOINC application, the screen scrambles and the computer freezes. I'm not sure if this is a software or hardware problem. I don't seem to have issues with any other application nor do I have problems using the BOINC app (provided I don't move the window around) or any of the projects I run. There's no temperature problem and otherwise it seems perfectly stable. However, I've run this version of Linux and BOINC on other machines with this chipset (though perhaps later revisions?) without any problem. I was going to try adding a discrete GPU. I have one that is small enough but I don't have a low profile bracket handy. At this point, it's been running with 100% CPU activity for a few days now with no problems so I'm not convinced this is a hardware problem.

Speaking of BOINC, this PC is still capable of running most of the projects I normally participate in. These projects include Einstein@home, Asteroids@home, Milkyway@home, Universe@home, World Community Grid, and Rosetta@home though 3 GB is a marginal amount for trying to run Rosetta tasks. You can see how it is doing overall at FreeDC.

Check out some of my other recent posts:

Vintage Photos - Lot 4 (085-088)
https://ecency.com/photography/@darth-azrael/vintage-photos-lot-4-085

Compute!'s Gazette (April 1988)
https://ecency.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/compute-s-gazette-april-1988

Vintage Photos - Lot 4 (081-084)
https://ecency.com/photography/@darth-azrael/vintage-photos-lot-4-081

Advanced Computer Entertainment (September 1990)
https://ecency.com/retrogaming/@darth-azrael/advanced-computer-entertainment-september-1990

Vintage Photos - Lot 4 (077-080)
https://ecency.com/photography/@darth-azrael/vintage-photos-lot-4-077

GamePro (April 1993)
https://ecency.com/retrogaming/@darth-azrael/gamepro-april-1993

Check out my other Social Media haunts (though most content is links to stuff I posted on Hive or re-posts of stuff originally posted on Hive):

Wordpress: https://www.megalextoria.com/wordpress
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/darth-azrael
Blogger: https://megalextoria.blogspot.com/
Odyssee: https://odysee.com/@Megalextoria:b
Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/c-2385054
Daily Motion: https://www.dailymotion.com/Megalextoria

Books I am reading or have recently read:

You Like It Darker by Stephen King.
The Altar Path by Joseph Lisiewski.
Red Star Falling by Steve Berry.

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