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Hobbes68 · Rated PG

Interesting article... I'm running the following setup:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe
Athlon XP2700+ with Coolermaster Aero 7+ sink/fan
3 x 512 PC2700 DDR Ram with heat spreaders
ATI All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro
Antec SB1040II case with 2 rear exhaust fans & 1 front intake fan
Antec 400W power supply
Western Digital WD1200 120 GB HD
round cables for better airflow
onboard sound and NIC
NEC FE2111SB 21" monitor

I'm having problems with my system shutting down when playing Rise of Nations. When I have lots of units on the screen and I'm assaulting the enemy my computer screen goes black, the test pattern comes up and the monitor goes into power save mode. Usually it reboots at this time. I initially thought the cpu was getting too hot and the board's thermal protection was kicking in, but I installed the Aero 7+ fan and I never see the temps go above 43 deg cel for the cpu and 21 deg cel for the board. Of course I have no way of monitoring them during gameplay as RoN plays full-screen.

After the last meltdown yesterday, I opened the case, turned off the power and felt for hot spots. The cpu heatsink was warm, but not too hot. The ram heatspreaders were luke warm, cooler than the cpu. The video card was blazing hot on the back of the board behind the gpu!!! It was almost too hot to touch!

Has anyone else had this experience? Has anyone tried any of the video card coolers on the market? The card has the stock fan and sink, but I don't think it's up to the task. Would an additional case fan in the side panel blowing directly on the card help? Or would it not help much at all?

I've also been thinking about putting in some kind of LCD display to monitor temps while playing games such as one from Matrix Orbital. Any recommendations?

Any help is greatly appreciated! I'm getting very frustrated with my supposedly killer new system that's only 4 months old.