Probably already covered in CPU cooling, but I missed it...

[JCroo]

In an attempt to add as much info as possible, here are all the specs I remember (I'll repost later with anything else I have or that is requested).

P4 3ghz
1Gig (of some type of mem)
Radeon 9800 128 (pro?)
Win XP home SP2
Windows firewall with AVG free

I posted (as a reply) this in the CPU cooling thread and mis stated that my PC is running at around 90 degrees C... yeah, that should be F

My initial "post" is below... I'll try and flesch that out a bit more.

Approximately three months ago (maybe more) I moved my tower to the (carpeted) floor and the oper temp went up a degree or two, but no other affects were noted. About a month ago, I noticed that on boot, I have many randomly place exclamation marks (!) throughout the boot environment, but once in Windows, all is fine... until I use Media Player or Play America's Army (AA). Media Player would display two vertical columns of small horizontal hash marks, but otherwise function properly (I adjusted the hardware acceleration setting down and that went away... granted that was after I (unsuccessfully tried to update my ATI drivers... I've since reverted to older ones)). In AA, there are many little hash marks across the bottom of the screen... they're fixed as well, meaning if I pan upwards, they're gone, but "looking" straight or down reveals them. I also play Madden 05, and all displays fine. Lastly I attempted to run a demo of Red Orchestra, and had the same lines displayed in the same places.

Now, based upon some of what I've been reading, my op temps were apparently too high, and, moreover, my p/s appears to not be able to handle either the temps or the load under which I place (or attempt to place) it... this is probably a good time to say that over the last week or so, albeit during a SoCal heat wave, my PC has auto shutoff every once in a while.

Also, in an effort to provide as much (useless?) info as possible, I watch download and watch copious amounts of Anime on this system and I therefore use various codecs and media players... if it has any bearing at all, I have the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) installed and I use Bitornado (two t's?) which had it's own problem recently as well.


This is what I initially posted
...so 90+ degrees Celsius isn't a good thing?

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From the day I powered my PC on (a little more than 2 years ago) operating temperatures of 85 - 90 degrees have been standard. I've never given much thought to internal PC cooling assuming that the manufacturer would account for this in the building process. I'm now having a few video problems and I would like to bounce several things off of someone. From what I've read thus far, high temps can adversely affect various internal components, but I haven't had any troubles (whatsoever) until recently. I'm wondering what I can do to ferret out and replace/address the culprit (I'm thinking P/S). Feel free to yell at me until I get this right.


Here are my system specs that I can remember:
P4 3ghz
1Gig (of some type of mem)
Radeon 9800 128 (pro?)
nothing else pertinent that I can remember.