Effects of no cooling fan?

ok , i have an 8500le 64mb. The fan on it got busted, a HD came in connect with it when i was pulling the HD out whilst the PC was running, as a result the noise was just too much, i had about 3 fins left on the fan. So i pulled the fan connector off the Graphics card board. So its now runnig without a fan.

It been like that for about 2months now. Im getting terrible lockups etc...

Is this card likely to burn out pretty soon?
and can you do internal damage by no cooling?

Ive noticed that spinter cell playes like a slideshow now whereas before it was fine

thanks!

yes you can damage the card, yes it will burn up, it may already be too late. the 8500 cooling was just plain bad to begin with. if you have a side case fan you might be able to run the 8500 passivly with a good heatsink.

i chopped up a slot one sink into four slivers for the ram and one large (think socket 7 sized) square for the core, i had a socket 7 fan going on there but my case air flow is good enough that i can loop 3dmark for 24 hours with the fan unplugged with no issues, and its an le oced to 290/290

yea if u want that 8500 to last a little longer buy a new heatsink/fan combo or like supertrcuker said to get a nice passive heatsink and a good case fan on it, that might work