Upgrading Dell Vostro 200

date: 2019-12-02

The Dell Vostro 200 is a great example of a Core 2 Duo computer on the LGA775 platform. It's easy to get these second hand or in the electronics recycling bin. Vostro is a business class brand from Dell, but it's a step down from their Optiplex line and uses the same parts and styling as some of their Inspiron models. The Vostro 200 is almost identical to the Inspiron 530 and uses the same motherboard with different firmware.

In this project I'm going to:

• Upgrade the processor from a Pentium to a Core 2 Duo E8400
• Upgrade to a Solid State Drive
• Update the firmware
• Upgrade the memory to 8GB memory
• Install Linux
• After much research settling on Linux Mint Debian Edition

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Upgrade process

This project was for a customer. She had and really liked a Dell Vostro 200 with Windows XP, but her machine died. I had another working Dell Vostro 200 that I upgraded for her. Here's how it went.

The first thing to deal with in this upgrade was the processor. This one had a really weak 1.8 GHz Pentium. The upgrade I chose was the 3.0 GHz Core 2 Duo E8400, my "go to" C2D cpu.

Memory upgrade from 2GB to 8GB

tags: #dell #vostro #lga775 #hardware