Hi guys, I'm pretty much in uncharted teritory when it comes to upgrading my PC so please be gentle 
Decided to update my PC bit by bit and after just about getting the RAM installed without problems I've hit a snag with the Graphics Card.
I've just bought an ATI Radeon HD 4350 1GB to upgrade my old 256MB x1300 Pro which arrived all shiny new this morning.
I took out the old card and installed the new one, making sure it was in the slot fully and positioned correctly. Put everything back together and started up the machine and it started fine. Went through the installation process for the drivers and all was running smooth. For about half hour.
Since then the PC started to freeze before crashing and restarting itself. When it turned itself back on there was pixelation all over the screen often in big blocks. This lasted through load up and as soon as it got to the desktop it crashed again. I turned everything off and checked card, which was very hot, I let it cool down for 5 minutes before trying again and had the same problem with pixelation and crashing.
Turned everything off again and have gone back to my old card which is working perfectly fine.
My question is this. Is the crashing and pixelation being caused by overheating of the card? If it is how do I fix the problem? If it's not what could the problem be?
I've checked the cards minimum requirements and they are:
X16 lane graphics slot on motherboard - Check
300 Watt PSU - Check
1GB system memory - Check
My PC specs:
4GB RAM
Viiv Core 2 Duo E6400 processor
250GB HDD
300W PSU - Apparantly that's what is shipped with a Dell Dimension E520, haven't opened up to check since putting the other card back in.
Appreciate any help Sorry for the long post.
Decided to update my PC bit by bit and after just about getting the RAM installed without problems I've hit a snag with the Graphics Card.
I've just bought an ATI Radeon HD 4350 1GB to upgrade my old 256MB x1300 Pro which arrived all shiny new this morning.
I took out the old card and installed the new one, making sure it was in the slot fully and positioned correctly. Put everything back together and started up the machine and it started fine. Went through the installation process for the drivers and all was running smooth. For about half hour.
Since then the PC started to freeze before crashing and restarting itself. When it turned itself back on there was pixelation all over the screen often in big blocks. This lasted through load up and as soon as it got to the desktop it crashed again. I turned everything off and checked card, which was very hot, I let it cool down for 5 minutes before trying again and had the same problem with pixelation and crashing.
Turned everything off again and have gone back to my old card which is working perfectly fine.
My question is this. Is the crashing and pixelation being caused by overheating of the card? If it is how do I fix the problem? If it's not what could the problem be?
I've checked the cards minimum requirements and they are:
X16 lane graphics slot on motherboard - Check
300 Watt PSU - Check
1GB system memory - Check
My PC specs:
4GB RAM
Viiv Core 2 Duo E6400 processor
250GB HDD
300W PSU - Apparantly that's what is shipped with a Dell Dimension E520, haven't opened up to check since putting the other card back in.
Appreciate any help
Sorry for the long post.
