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You've been ripped off and the replacement fitting will not last long either if it has the same cheap nasty driver fitted. I strongly recommend you replace it with a reputable branded item such as Meanwell, Osram, FSP etc

It is a current operated elcb so is an RCD

Correct for my installation. Are you asking me or op though?

Despite it looking a bit questionable, I'm pretty sure it does. Even if it doesn't, I know it's 100% safe and it's my own house. It's fed from a selv (non mains referenced) transformer and the cable is rated to operate at 180°C! The guys who installed the stove were perfectly happy with it too.

They're halogen lamps that run at crazy temperatures themselves, the temperature above the stove is nothing in comparison Edit: hang on, I've just re-read your original post, these are going *inside* a chimney? And above what, an open fire? Putting lights in the space outside of the chimney...

I'd suggest any lighting above a stove should be supplied from a (remote) 12v selv transformer. In that case you could just leave some lamps hanging. That's what I did, 2x 12v 10w lamps lights it up perfectly

Reply #4 told you what to buy, a week ago

I'd consider Philips to be no longer a "top brand" of lamp. It's entirely possible they're just noisy due to poor/cheapened-down circuit design. I'd start by getting one or two replacement lamps from another brand and seeing how they do.

Many T5 lamps last 20k hours alone & a decent HF ballast has a MTBF of 100k hours. I don't see how 25k hours for an entire fitting that one throws away when it fails is acceptable?

You are quite right, and I can't provide that evidence, but I'd bet money some of the older magnetic ballasts would do them hours easily. There's no reason for them to fail if not left with stuck starters fitted, they are merely made up of varnished copper wire wrapped around an iron core after...

Ah the old LED warranty get-out clause! "5 years warranty" they are keep to print all over the box, this is the lesser spotted limitation of that, it's usually said 5 years but only up to say 35,000 hours, which is pathetic when there are fluorescent tubes out there rated to last 80,000 hours...

A couple of flush ceiling lights will be the best option here, it will provide a MUCH better quality of light compared to than awful spot light bars and is something that could be done easily without having to start ripping the ceiling apart

You'll need a length of solid single core cable which will push into the holes and self-lock in. The cable is known as '1/0.8' if you search eBay for it. You could always solder (tin) some small stranded cable and try to push that in.

If you want a very small point source of glaring light which all it'll do is cast shadows & darkness in areas not directly under it, sure. Doesn't need to be IP65.

My laptop has near enough the same spec as yours (i5-7300u) although has 'only' 8gb ram, but has an SSD. Average startup time of Firefox is about 4 seconds, sometimes a bit more sometimes a bit less. File explorer is pretty much instant, maybe 1 second delay. Boot time is not long at all, I...

I strongly advise you do the SSD upgrade anyway. A 240/250gb SSD can be bought for <£30. We are not exaggerating when we say the difference between a traditional HDD and and SSD is night and day. Ram will make very little difference for general day to day usage.

Do you need 16Gb ram? 8gb is ample for day to day use. If you haven't already upgraded to an SSD that would be a much more worthwhile investment

So it's working fine then?? o_O

Modern onboard (or rather on-CPU) graphics are surprisingly powerful especially if it's only required for video as they will hardware decode many popular formats. OP's motherboard has Display Port (DP) and HDMI. DP often supports outputting up to 4 monitors, however it looks like you would need...

If you're not gaming I don't think you need such a high end card. Do you even need a card at all? Modern Intel CPU's decode most modern video codecs and support three displays.