I found a fix for the problem ..... changed my tactic instead of trying to get that old old old DELL to go.
I used a Coolmaster Storm tower - changed to a different MoBo / CPU and PSU / picked her up different ram as well, runs good so far with a new install of Solus Budgie. Her specs look like this
jenpc@jenpc ~ $ inxi -Fxz
System:
Host: jenpc Kernel: 4.20.16-112.current x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
v: 8.2.0 Desktop: Budgie 10.5 Distro: Solus 4.0
Machine:
Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: M4A88TD-M/USB3 v: Rev X.0x
serial: <filter> BIOS: American Megatrends v: 0902 date: 12/10/2010
CPU:
Topology: Triple Core model: AMD Athlon II X4 640 bits: 64 type: MCP
arch: K10 rev: 3 L2 cache: 1536 KiB
flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4a svm bogomips: 18080
Speed: 800 MHz min/max: 800/3000 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 800 2: 800
3: 1800
Graphics:
Device-1: AMD RS880 [Radeon HD 4250] vendor: ASUSTeK M5A88-V EVO
driver: radeon v: kernel bus ID: 01:05.0
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.3 driver: ati,radeon
unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1920x108060Hz
OpenGL: renderer: AMD RS880 (DRM 2.50.0 / 4.20.16-112.current LLVM 8.0.0)
v: 3.3 Mesa 19.0.6 direct render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: AMD SBx00 Azalia vendor: ASUSTeK M5A88-V EVO
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:14.2
Device-2: AMD RS880 HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 4200 Series]
vendor: ASUSTeK M5A88-V EVO driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
bus ID: 01:05.1
Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.20.16-112.current
Network:
Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
vendor: ASUSTeK P8P67 and other motherboards driver: r8169 v: kernel
port: e800 bus ID: 04:00.0
IF: enp4s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 111.79 GiB used: 7.48 GiB (6.7%)
ID-1: /dev/sda model: SATA SSD size: 111.79 GiB
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 105.59 GiB used: 7.39 GiB (7.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-1
ID-2: /boot size: 269.0 MiB used: 82.8 MiB (30.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
ID-3: swap-1 size: 3.73 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-0
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 36.0 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
Processes: 182 Uptime: 1h 06m Memory: 15.42 GiB used: 1.53 GiB (9.9%)
Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: N/A Shell: bash v: 5.0.7
inxi: 3.0.34