Radeon X700 Freezing/Rebooting

[Alroko]

Hi there, I have just purchased a Sapphire Radeon X700 256mb video card. I installed it and it runs fine in the desktop setting. When I enter Half-Life 2 I only get roughly 30 mins of play time before it reboots (the first time), or it goes to a straight blue screen (the second time). During gameplay it runs great, nothing strange occurs until the random crashes. I checked my cpu and mainboard temps with SISandra after the crash and it was at 52 degrees (as of now it's 49 degrees during desktop use, so not a huge leap). So I believe, with what little knowledge I have, that it is either the power supply (250w, i know the "minimum specs" say otherwise, but I've researched and this card should perform properly on a 250w psu), overheating (unlikely) or bad ram (which I know nothing about). As a important note the computer is a Shuttle XPC, and I am unsure if I would be able to upgrade the psu if it is indeed the problem. Also, shuttle psu's are apparently of higher quality, so please correct me if I'm wrong. So if anyone could provide some assistance it would be great. My basic system specs are as follows:

AMD Athlon XP 2600
512mb ram (2X256)
250w PSU
1 DVD/RW drive
120 gb hard drive
and that's basically it

thank you in advance for any help anyone can give (I've almost had enough of computer problems!)

[smurfy]

Hi and welcome to CTH

... only get roughly 30 mins of play time before it reboots (the first time), or it goes to a straight blue screen (the second time).

My gut instinct when reading that is HEAT.

The underpowered PSU won't be helping but I'm betting your GPU is overheating.
Everest Home Edition has a GPU temp sensor (provided the card has a temp chip).

You may want to have a read of this thread

[Alroko]

Thank you for the quick reply. I'll attempt to use Ati Tray Tools (as suggested by that thread) to see if the fan is not running at a proper speed.

[Alroko]

I installed Tray Tools and went into the fan tab. It was set to go to 50 % at 45 degrees and steadily rise up to 80% at 80 degrees (43% at idle). I took off the computer's box cover and changed the fan speed to go to 65% at 45 degrees and 80% at 50 degrees. I've since been periodically checking (with SISandra) the comp's cpu temp. It steadily rises 1 degree every minute or so (starting at 40 degrees at startup it's now 47degrees in about 8 mins), even though im only at the desktop. Since the box is off I'm starting to lean to the psu being insufficient to power my (rather sparse) setup. I'll attempt to try a All-in-Wonder radeon 9600 pro in the setup (as my brother's 250w psu in his shuttle can power it with no problems). Any more ideas are still appreciated!

[Alroko]

Thanks a lot Smurfy! I didn't even have to change the card. Simply by upping the revs of the video cards fan I achieve a very stable status (I also removed the case to increase airflow). Ati Tray Tools is a great program, thanks again!