Yeah, I got relatively that far so far....it's a stock Inspiron 530, but there were a couple versions. The 530s had a 250w psu and has trouble fitting larger cards. I know mine doesn't have the direct power connection that you mentioned, so I'm aware of that as a limiting factor. As far as the ram, I'm fairly confident in what I ordered, as I researched the hell out of that, and knew about the whole mixing rules from back in the day, so I said I'd have a total of 4 soon, but I actually ordered 4 gigs, and will just keep the 2 that are currently in there somewhere as a back up. As far as the 32-bit thing limiting me to 4gigs, I think this motherboard also limits it, as, as far as I can tell, everyone that went up to 8 also had to upgrade the motherboard, etc. I'm not looking to do a complete overhaul, but I did want to at least max out the ram since that's pretty cheap and easy to do, and I definitely want to be the hell away from Vista. I just figured I'd get something better than the on-board stock video (and maybe even look at an SSD...), but that seems to have gotten a bit more complex since the late 90s, early 2000s when I built my last deal.
That whole upgrade vs. clean install thing, I wasn't completely aware of, but that's good to know (and potentially a pretty big bummer). I was aware of the 300w psu and lack of a direct connection being limiting factors, but sadly I'm new to different types of pci-e slots, so I'm next to lost on that end of it. I'm not really looking to get something amazing right now, as I'll probably just be playing SoD and nothing that much more intense game-wise, and watching shows/movies, but I get the impression that there are tons of stuff that would "work", but that I'd get the same effect after factoring in the limits out of something much much lighter. In the meantime though, I'll follow the suggestions so far. Thanks you two. (feel free to point out if anything I say is full of shit here)...