Okay, there are two fans in the case, both seem to be running, although one sounds like the bearing is rough for the first few minutes after start-up.
I noticed that the video card does not have it's own fan. (ie: no fan on the card itself)
this pooter is 2 years old. It's a Dell XPS with a radeon 9800 card.
Skuzzy do you mean a power problem with the card or the computer power supply?
I'm kinda leaning towards insufficient cooling on the card, but am wondering about the power comment as well.
cheers, and thanks for the help!
RTR