I can help you VoB!
I’m a computer science and business major at a university, and I’ve been a techie pretty much my whole life!
Okay, so your computer supports up to 8 GB of RAM, spread across 4 sticks. I would not risk purchasing sticks with larger capacity than 2 GB, since RAM is difficult to return and it wouldn’t likely work. Anyway, If you were to purchase 8 GB of RAM new, you could go to NewEgg and order 4 sticks of this G-Skill RAM. Take note that you should have a 64-bit operating system if you wish to take advantage of more than 4 gigabytes of RAM. I don’t know how you plan to use this, but for VERY casual gaming and browsing 4 GB might be a better choice. If that’s what you want to do, you can simply order two.
If you want to go used on the RAM, you could do that too—I just used the NewEgg tool b/c it’s easy for me to find specific products
Here’s a budget card that will do more than enough for you. I like it because it has HDMI, so you could connect it to a TV and play protected content. You have a PCI Express 1.0 slot, while this is a PCI Express 2.0 card. Do not be alarmed, the card will still work in your machine—though it will not be running at full speed. But for your computer, the processor will be the bottleneck before the GFX card.
Which brings us to the next question, “should” you do it—I’m inclined to say no and here’s why.
This is a pretty old computer, and it’s not all that great. The processor is pretty anemic, and the power supply is likely a custom size, and very small. And, since it was so cheap, I’d be pretty hesitant to pump more money in to it. But I’m sure these are things you know already, and I’m sure you purchased this machine for a reason, instead of getting something more expensive.
I think 2G of RAM for very light usage on a clean Windows 8 installation will work for you. Heck, I have a pretty old Lenovo T61p running a 32-bit version of Windows 8.1 and an SSD and it’s snappy.
If you want to eek the most usage out of this for the smallest price, here’s what I would do:
- This Graphics Card (the GT 610 was the OEM choice on this machine for a while)
- This RAM Kit
- This SSD I recommend an SSD because it will make your old computer “feel” newer by massively increasing the rate at which data can be read/retrieved, and written. For every day usage, this will provide a huge difference. I chose a 120 GB drive over a smaller one because I feel that 64 GB SSD’s are too easy to fill with a small amount of digital media (movies, photos, or what have you).
I know this is a lot of money to spend, and I am glad to help explain why I chose what I chose, and if you help me get a better picture of what you want to do, I can try and give you better/cheaper recommendations.