Upgrade 4700 or buy new?

Dimension 4700
2.8 Ghz Pentium 4
160 G Hard drive
1.5 G RAM
All original equipment except added RAM

Having some issues with FFox and Kaspersky shutting down. Posted on malware forum and ran through the steps. The logs were clean. Ran Dell Diagnostics and memory errors showed. There was an increase in noise from
fan. Removed faulty original 256 G sticks and moved newer to slots 1 & 2.
Cleaned the dust out. (Found the fan shroud will lift up to clean. Had not seen that in any posts) Although slower it is running okay.
I work with photos and due to slow DSL in rural area often have multiple tabs open. Should I spend any more upgrading a 5 yr old machine or just save toward a new system? I doubt I can build my own.

I would appreciate suggestions in either case.
Thank you

 

Nah, don't upgrade man. You can get a good dual core machine with plenty of RAM, decent video and disk space for less than $500 USD. I know you don't want to build your own but Dacads has put together a decent thread on price/power and would be a good place to get your feet wet, just remember $$350 UK = $500US.

You might want to give the specs to someone who can build you something, though it's quite easy to do yourself, insert socket A into tab B etc.

Forgot to mention, you can reuse your hard drive.

 

When you say you moved newer to slots 1 & 2 I assume you meant the RAM? RAM will often only work in dual channel mode (i.e. Faster, which a 5 year old motherboard should be doing) when it is slots 1&3 or 2&4. Can you explain how much RAM you now have and what size the modules are.

Here is a diagram on Memory installation for the board and as they say you will get reduced performance if not installed correctly:

Removing and Installing Parts
Dell Dimension 4700 Series Service Manual:Memory

I have to agree I wouldn't spend anymore money as your flogging a dead horse.

 

Have to agree with DS I like to format once a year and it's amazing the new lease of life in the system.

I once pulled out 5Gb of crap from a mates PC using good old CCleaner Slim 2.23.999 and he couldn't believe the difference it made to speed etc. It will do a registry scan as well, make sure you do a save of the reg file within the app before removing the obsolete entries.

 

The newer RAM was in slots 3 and 4 and I moved it to 1 and 2. (numbering system in manual) The sheet that came with the 512 G RAM said to install the larger RAM in slot 1 and 2. The manual doesn't mention that. Did it that way this time. I just installed the new Crucial RAM and all is okay so far. Now have 2X1G and 2x512G.

Aware the ISP speed controls internet speed. Am running more tabs open when online to avoid paying highway robbery price here. ISP's are subsidized but get $49.95/mo for basic DSL.

Installed XP Pro on an older XPS 600 so I have formatted a drive. May try that as it sounds like a simple fix. Have XP Pro on this too.

Figured the HD got bogged down but didn't think about the registry. Have used CCleaner for a while and just did the cleaning and maintainance procedure in the malware forum.

Thanks to all for your suggestions. This is a great site for "non-geeks"!