Upgrading aurora

Welcome to the forums

 

 

RAM:  I've no doubt the RAM you mention is indeed suitable, but I'd recommend using either Crucial UK's 'Memory Advisor Tool', or Corsair's 'Memory Configurator' to confirm the RAM you can use.

Crucial (possibly Corsair as well?) "guarantee" that the recommended RAM will work in your Dell system.

If you're going to be buying one or two 6GB sticks, you won't need to use the 3x 1GB sticks as well?

You're best keeping them of course - at least until your warranty runs out.  But if you get (i.e.) 2x 6GB sticks, I doubt you'll be using any software which will benefit from the extra 3GB?

 

It's surprising to see that Dell are still supplying older/slower 16X DVD±RW in a top gaming system, when 22x drives have been available for about a year now

Anyway - re a Blu-Ray drive:  I doubt you'll get many arguments that Pioneer drives are hard to beat. 

Sadly however, they're almost always more expensive than equivalent models from the other major manufacturers, which suggests to me you're paying extra, simply for the name?

For instance... whereas a (retail) Pioneer 8x Blu-Ray RW/16x DVD±RW costs around £185, a (retail) LG drive offering the same speeds, is around £140!

I've always found LG +/or Samsung drives to offer the best compromise between VFM, reliability, and noise levels.

 

Re the hard drive:  Any SATA 2 drive is suitable.

The one you've mentioned there though (7200.11), is the model which has experienced 'clicking' noises - often leading to drive failure!

If you want to get a Seagate (for the 5 year warranty), look at one of their other models - i.e. the newer 7200.12.

But it's widely accepted, that the best hard drive currently, is Samsung's F3.  The previous best was another Samsung model - the F1.

A Western Digital Caviar Black would be my other recommendation.

 

But I suggest you do some shopping around, before ordering the various bits 'n' pieces.

A number of PC specialist websites have 'special offer' pages, on which you might be able to buy what you're after, cheaper than it normally is?. 

For instance - Scan have a 'Today Only' page.  Aria have a 'Deal for Today' page.  And Micro Direct also have a special offers page.

Others sites worth checking include CCL, Ebuyer, Dabs, Tekheads, Kustom PCs, Oyyy (yup - that's three Y's!), Savapoint, Saverstore, Specialtech - to name but a few