Hello.

My Dell Inspiron 530 has developed a strange starting up behaviour; when I press 'on', the internal fan fires up at full speed for 2 or 3 seconds as usual, but then - just as the fan is about to slow down as it normally does - the computer shuts down completely. A couple of seconds later, it starts itself back up - fast fan, then off again. On its third attempt, it works ok - fast fan, then slow down, BIOS beep, and a normal start.

A search has come up with a failing NVidia graphics card as causing these symptoms in similar computers. I will be trying some tests such as removing the card and checking how it fires up, but, assuming that the card is the culprit, I would welcome some suggestions for replacement cards.

More Tech Info: Inspiron 530 with Intel Core2 Duo E6750 @ 2.66GHz, 2GB RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT graphics card. Standard Dell PSU which is around, what, 350W?

General use - internet, photo-processing, some web games, etc. nothing state-of-the-art!

All I am looking for is a cheap card that I would hope is better than the original one simply due to the fact it's roughly 5-years old.

Cards like the Radeon HD 3450 are available for around £35 (I did say I wanted 'cheap'!), or the HD 4550 for a fiver more. I've also read reviews on the HIS HD 5450 with 1GB for only £26...

My problem is that I don't know how my original 8600GT compares with these!

I'd appreciate your thoughts.

Many thanks.