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I just bought a Late 2008 Dell Optiplex 960 from my universities surplus store.

Here is a detailed Technical Guide.

I am going to purchase more RAM so it has 8GB DDR2 800MHz(which is supposedly its maximum). But am I allowed to go more than this or will it not work (for Instance if I bought 4x4GB of DDR2 800MHz RAM, would the computer not work with it?

Currently it has 250GB Hard drive in it, but i want to use it to learn about servers (I want to make my first home server to stream media and host a game server on it). But I have no idea how large of a Hard Drive I can put inside it. What limits the size of a hard drive I can put in this thing? I am hoping to put at least 500 GB in in (but preferably 750GB as I have an extra 750GB 3.5" Drive laying around my house.

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  • So you have two question. What is the maxium amount of memory your system supports and what is the maxium size HDD your system supports? What limits the size of the HDD is the SATA controller. Determine what the SATA controller the system has then provide that infomration.
    – Ramhound
    May 26, 2015 at 18:01
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    Your link tells us nearly nothing about your specifications. You will have to provide us that yourself, edit your question, so we have an idea what you are dealing with. The link only displays your hardware information on your system ( auto detection ). While you might be able to use the 750GB HDD for additional storage you won't be able to use it as a system drive.
    – Ramhound
    May 26, 2015 at 18:04
  • The computer has an external eSATA port, does this mean i can put the 750GB as the additional eSATA drive? What limits the size of the system drive? May 26, 2015 at 18:12
  • The SATA controller is what limits the size of the HDD. I can tell based on the replacement parts, offered by Dell, what the limit is. You should do some research on eSATA ports.
    – Ramhound
    May 26, 2015 at 18:21
  • like the protocol? What do you mean "you can tell based on the replacement parts"? Sometimes the manufacturer doesn't list all compatible devices, i have had personal experience where Apple lists the maximum RAM on one of their 2010 macbooks as 8GB when in actuality it could take 16GB. I just want to know what this will accept as its internal and external drives May 26, 2015 at 18:48

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Generally speaking there should be no hard drive size limit, if over 4gb you will have to format it using GPT

Dell use to tell you what features were added with each bios upgrade version, among these details was memory size upgrades if any, but they no longer give this info, all I can suggest it upgrade the bios to the latest version before attempting 8gb memory upgrade but is doubtful Dell ever increased it beyond 8gb.

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