Long Story, but please read and assist!

Sorry to write so much. I just wanted to give all the facts. Please help me! ( I have also bold faced the important if you just want to skim) 

I bought  a Dell E510, which out of the box  came with an 80 gig hard drive, 1 gig of ram, a dual core 2,66ghz processor, and a 128mb x300se graphics card, and a 305 watt power supply, in August of last year. It served me faithfully for the first two months. ( Ihad never owned my own computer before.) In october, I pooled my birthday money and bought an x1950 pro. Oh, the differnces it made and still does. As testimony of its power, it most recently mustered 60+FPS on the demo ofTomb Raider: Anniversary, with all settings maxed and 16x Anti-aliasing.

But the real reason I am posting: Cooling and the sucky power supply.

Before purchasing the new card, I used an online power supply calculater, plugged in all the variables + the new card and cam up with 294. Hot Dog! Nary an overheating problem, nor has the block's power ever failed while powering my rig. However, a little game called STALKER came out. I bought it played it and enjoyed it...for 15 minutes. My card had overheated. Catalyst Control showed 79 degrees celcius! To hot, I guess for the x1950 that could. So I cracked open my rig and put my nightstand fan next to it. This seemed to help, so I decided that I needed more fans, for after the STALKER incident even Need For Speed Most Wanted was artifacting.

In Best Buy today, I picked up an Antec fan, that fits inside two expansion slots. It takes up 3.6 watts, so theoretically I am still in the clear. However, it doesn't appear to be doing anything. Is it supposed to be under my card? The blowing side of the fan is not facing the card, rather the sucking side is. Is this the way it is supposed to be? My card is facing up (not upside down as most mother boards require) and the fan is underneath it directly (no space between, at all), and as I said the blowing part is facing away from the card, not toward it.

Please help.

Thanks!

Shrodinger

They rarely do make a difference, the best thing to do is buy an aftermarket fan from Zalman and slap it on the GPU.     You can keep the Antec fan under the GPU and get a Zalman vf900 and you will have a sick GPU cooler and something that will pull its hot air and push it out back. 

How many case fans do you have in that DELL?

79C is too hot for an X1950Pro? Are you kidding me? You are perfectly fine, you don't even need that extra fan.. unless your video card is artifacting while gaming?

My 7600GT idles 59C and under full load can hit 85C.

By the way, Dell's power supplies are of very high-quality and are underrated. That 305W PSU can most likely output more than 305Ws max.

Never mind.. just read that you are having artifacts. =/ 

They rarely do make a difference, the best thing to do is buy an aftermarket fan from Zalman and slap it on the GPU.     You can keep the Antec fan under the GPU and get a Zalman vf900 and you will have a sick GPU cooler and something that will pull its hot air and push it out back. 

How many case fans do you have in that DELL?

9mmSpliff

Just the one it came with.  it 's in the front of the case, and pulls air in over the heat sink for the cpu. Also, does the after market fan involve removing the old fan (on the graphics card) and if so, doesn't that void my warranty?

I agree with your fighter list, but you forgot Super STreet Fighter 2 Turbo.  I am huge fighting and driving game fan.  Soul Calibur, Killer Insinct and Street Fighter for me.

Anyways, yes it does void the warantee, but some of the x1950pro has problems with the heatsink touching the memory on the GPU.  It wasnt going down all the way and touching them.  SApphire had that problem the most.

You should get a fan on the back of the case too, it needs to exhaust the hot air out.  Right now your PC is just fillin gup with fresh air, but its sitting in there and getting hot. 

LOL Are you kidding me?! I have a Sapphire. AAARGH!

Also thanks for your thoughts on the list. It was for current releases though, so that's why Street fighter wasn't on there. I love that game though, which is why I love MUGEN. Also, it would be sweet if another Mortal Kombat or Soul Caliber came out for pc. If you like driving, I reccomend DiRT. the demo just came out. My comp ate it alive, and with your 8800 I know you will too. The graphics were ok. Everybody else likes them though...