I have to say that this is one of the few people I have seen with overheating computers. I had that problem too and it bugged me for a while. I was running a power supply of 170W and my graphic driver needed at least 300W or somewhere around that. It was amazing how it worked, really!

Anyway, now I have a new computer case (I showed you guys earlier). It's pretty cool and I got for about $45 dollars. It has: (labeled as)

-Air Duct for Intel
-Support PCI Express / Intel Standard
-Power Supply 500 W for Intel Prescott
-Meet Intel Prescott / Thermal Standard / < 38 degrees Celcius
-Extreme Cooler / 3 Fans

It helps with the heating part. Before once, my computer overheated, shut itself down, and I opened the case to see what the problem was. Of course - I touched the memory chip and AOW!! It sizzled my fingers... hahaha

I let my computer cool down for a while and booted... but with the side panels open. I learned that getting a new computer case is very recommended (or a cooling system) when overheating occurs

to continue...
my card isn't hot to the touch after a crash. it's warm, but nothing alarming. Nothing's overclocked. The graphics card has been replaced with another one of the same model since the first burnt out. That's why i don't get if it could be faulty, with two separate cards. I could get into a hardware fan solution for the temperature problem, but what if it's not the card?
I'm not running on 110V, i know for sure. Since relocating to Pakistan, I've had lots of trouble with power cuts, but when it's on, it's 220V. If it were 110V, after 10 seconds my computer would be a smoke bomb. I've had it happen with other equipment.
The box fan idea seems like it might work in my case.
I AM able to get temperature stats from the motherboard for the CPU, but only in BIOS, which is nice, but it's not the same as getting the heat when running intensive stuff.
it averages between 30 and 45 Celsius.

I realised the image links didn't quite display. here we go again

and

The vent on the back of the power source (bottom left of the top picture) looks dusty. Get a can of air and try blowing dust out of it. You can get a can of air at a department store or a hardware store.

The rear fan is not supposed to suck air from outside the case. The airflow should be so that cold air is sucked in from the front and the hot air is blown out from the rear. Hot air rises up.

If your rear fan is really blowing air inside the case, this is the problem. Flip is so that is blows the hot air out and close your cases side panels.

I don't know about Intel but AMD does not recommend using fans on the front of the case. Usually having fans at rear or the roof of the case are enough to generate the airflow and as air comes out, some air must get in. So it is extemely important that the air intake on front (low) of the case is free from dust. Most cases have filters on front and they need to be cleaned regularly. Also it is important that the case is well sealed from other parts, so that the air gets in from the low front.

My only thought is that you have a bad power supply. Had I read this post sooner, I would have told you to replace the power supply with a high quality power supply rated for at least 500 watts. The power requirements for a high powered graphics card is extream and it seems that you may live in an area with less than perfect power as well. If you are getting dirty electicity from the grid, your power supply isn't good enough clean the dirty power, and the power supply isn't rated for the power requirements of your system; you would experience the symptoms you have described.

Also, your Intel board should have come with a system monitor application which can read your power usage, cooling system and estimate the temperature of the various parts of the system.

If you don't have the application, I suggest going to Intel and downloading it. It can be of great benefit to troubleshooting the problem.

This site offers a lot of information about how power supplies effect your system.
http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com/

vujsa

So I switched the fan around to blow air out from the back.
my case doesn't have a filter in front. should i exchange it for one that does? i don't understand why a branded case (fujitsu-siemens, in my case) would omit a pretty necessary air vent.
i'm working on the Intel monitor utility, but i have noticed that the processor fan runs crazy when the heavy-duty stuff is running. So does that mean it's my processor that is the cause of the problem?

nope, fan speed should go up when the cpu temperature rises.
About the GPU temperature, could you stress the vid card (rthdribl -> http://www.deathfall.com/article.php?sid=2836) and then check in the nVidia drivers how hot the GPU is ?

And other thing you might check is the memory, since video-editting and gaming is pretty memory intensive. You could use memtest68 for it (can't be run in windows, (that's the good part because every block of the memory is tested) but you can make a bootable floppy)

Solved the problem. stuck a regular fan in the side of my desk, and got a dual fan cooler for the hard disk. Still it's not the best because of dirty power, and i can't get higher rating than what i have now. it's almost impossible to find them here. But it works ok at least, though it's a rough job.

If you want really good cooling, Go to www.FrozenCpu.com, They have alot of new cooling tech that can get your computer to an almost perfect tempurature.

So, actualy the problem isn't realy solved, right ?
There still is one thing that bother me, why can you play at 640*480 but not at a higher resolution ???
I realy don't know . Try some programs that can stress your cpu (prime95), memory(prime95/memtest68) or vid. card (rthdribl).

And than there is another strange thing I noticed. There is some kind of foam behind your motherboard (right behind the cpu). No clue what it's doing there.