Dell C521 Video card upgrade ?

My brother just got that computer but i see that is a small tower and the bay to put a pcie 16x card in there is just too small its like 3,5 inch large, normal card wont fit in there, is it the low profile card i need ? If yes still the low profile video card are less larger but the *braket* to fit it, is like the normal one, can i cut that and fit in there or it come with a lower *braket* ?

Your PSU is probably going to limit your choices even if you can fit a full size card.Don't expect amazing results from a 1300 series.

After reading these comments related to the Dell C521. I own a Dell C521 & agree the on-board graphics are yuck!
Aren't ALL on-board graphics yuck? Fine if you just need for work. But as far are the Leadtek 7600Gs being your best bet, I disagree. It is true that this machine is housed in a slim BTX case, with a small power supply, which limits the type of add-in video cards you can opt for. Both physically and electrically.
I decided to drop in an ATI X1300pro 256 Mb DDR3 (from Dell). I was pleasantly surprised at it's performance. With a 600Mhz GPU core and 400 Mhz Ram it is very respectable for a low profile graphics card. Does a good job in Xp or Vista.
In fact I looked at the 7600GS and it appears lack-lustre in comparison to the X1300 pro. My recommendation: Don't be afraid to try the Dell ATI X1300pro. You may pay a little more, but you know, it fits, it works, surprisingly well too.

Tx. this has been my opinion.

The C521 has a 280w psu @ 18-19amps
The E510 has 22amps
Some people run E520 and 521's with a 8800GT (but I wouldn't)

KFA by Galaxy 9600GT Low Profile graphic card $90 after rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814162016

uses 61w of power
http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index.php?showtopic=264

check your systems power needs
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

I had the same problem with a ATI Radeon X1300 on a Vista machine. It would not show an image at all after I installed it, even with the latest drivers. I switched back to onboard video and troubleshooted but never got it to work. So I left it in and went back to onboard video with the intention of getting a new video card. What was odd though, is after a few days, all of a sudden it the display was blank after a reboot and I had to use the X1300 to get an image! But then it showed problems with the card and I could not get it to display correctly and it showed as having problems in device manager. So I replaced it with a Galaxy NVidia GeForce 7200 GS.

Now I keep getting driver stopped errors when working with the built in picture editor! I found a work around so I just chalk it up to Vista quirks. From what I have read, noone seems to know exactly what is wrong because this happens with all kinds of graphics cards from different manufacturers.