PC Situation, Possible Upgrade

Variable

I've posted about this before and gotten bits of advice here and there, but I'm going to lay it all out right now and hopefully (with my newfound willingness to spend some money) get this taken care of.

I built a PC a while back. first things first, specs...

Mobo - Asus A8N5X
Processor - 2.2ghz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core
Video Card - NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
and 2 gigs of ram.

For as long as I can remember - meaning whenever I first played anything besides WoW on it after I built it - I've had problems while gaming. specifically in any source games (CS:S mostly) I get a weird graphics glitch and after 15-45 minutes the computer freezes.

I would have taken care of this a long time ago while still in warranty for the products, but I moved and got totally out of touch with gaming on my pc so I didn't encounter the problem.

Then it started freezing sometimes while watching DVDs or even just listening to music.

I realized it was probably a heating issue (thanks in part to help on here) but I didn't really investigate much because I'm lazy and also had no money with which to fix whatever the problem was anyway.

One day I decided to dust out the computer, so I disconnected everything (externally not internally), dusted it out, and hooked it back up. When I turned it on I got the error **"Computer" or "CPU" fan fail or slow speed**. Obviously this panicked me a bit, but the computer still ran with the exact same problem as before, so I continued to use it casually dealing with crashes when they occurred (somewhat infrequently but enough that I eventually didn't want to deal with it anymore)

So where I'm at right now is, I either have an issue with my Mobo or my cpu fan (from the quick research I've done).

Ultimately I guess my question is, am I better off upgrading my mobo and processor or trying to fix them? I'm not sure fixing is even possible and as I mentioned I'm out of warranty by ages so I can't get a replacement.

and if my best bet is replacement, what do you suggest? I'd like to know on both the high end and the low because I'm not sure how much I'll end up investing... and I should get a new case as well.

oh! and also, for a system that I've described (or for a variation anyone might suggest) what would be a good wattage for a power supply? I'm not sure what my current one is, nor do I know if it could be related to any of these problems, but either way I'd be willing to upgrade it along with the other stuff if it is smart to do so.

thanks for the help and sorry for the long post, just I need somewhat specific recommendations and I thought it'd be best to be specific.

edit - oh and in speedfan my cpu core is rated at 61C while doing nothing at all, which speedfan seems to think is hot... at least if that's what the little flame means.

Malkor

I think 61 degrees is acceptable for your CPU. It sounds like you've had problems from the beginning, so fixing it now would be hard at best.

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=8387

On the first page of this thread are three starting points for a new system. The 'midrange' one should let you play any game out now at high settings. The 7800 would be good enough if you don't want to buy a new video card though.

Variable

oh nice I didn't know there was such a detailed post in that OP. thanks a bunch... I'll probably keep my card for now and upgrade the medium path mobo and processor.

thanks.

edit - according to a different program, it's my videocard that's at 61degrees c. don't know if that's okay or not os I wanted to post it.

Zxerol

61 degrees C idle for the CPU is a bit high. 61 for the video card isn't. My 8800GTX goes to 82 under load, it's ridiculous.