Case cooling advice wanted

I have an xoxide aluminum case with 5 fans (preinstalled). Using Silent tec program which came with my A458XN motherboard, it shows CPU temp of 40c and chassis temp of 37c at idle. I am running a P4 2ghz with pretty much standard heatsink fan and a ATI 9700pro with stock fan, 1gb or pc2700, scsi card with 10k rpm ultra2, 20gb ide, dvd/cdrw combo drive and floppy. The ps is a dual fan 400w. Pc sits on a shelf in entertainment unit but has plenty room for air flow around it. That is it for heat generators. I am suspect about the dual fan on ps because I have never seen the internal one fire off, not sure if it works or not. Now my issue. I recently bought Far Cry and started playing. I have the 9700pro maxed with all settings for optimum quality, after about 1 - 2 hours,, I start getting pixelation and eventually the pc locks up. My first guess is a heat issue because if I drop settings to performance, I can play 4 4 - 5 hours. My question then,, is do I cool the case or just concentrate on cooling the video card and cpu ? I dont mind if I spend a couple hundred to mod the thing and I do plan on getting one of the newer ATI cards for Christmas (present to myself). Any ideas out there ? Thanks in advance.

it shows CPU temp of 40c and chassis temp of 37c at idle.

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Try playing the game with the side panel off and a desk fan or simular device blowing air on the mobo..See if it crashes or pixelates..This will be your best case flow setup..If it's stable you need to work on your case cooling. Have you removed the fan grids from the case yet? Make sure your wiring and cables are out of the air paths also..

The side panel does have a preinstalled fan in it,, blowing right onto the video card. I have not run it with the panel off, thought that would mess up my airflow. Case has 2 intakes in front, 1 side and 2 in rear plus ps fan. I am also using round cables and have them kinda tucked out of the way. The room is always around 74f , wife likes it warm. I have also used AS3 on the cpu/heatsink. I did lap the heatsink myself with brasso, came out with a nice mirror finish,, so I think that part is okay.

If you don't try it you'll never know..

The air temp going INTO the heatsink or radiator fan is the floor - all other temps you see are added onto this temp. If the air temp is 35 or 40C going into the fan, then there is NO WAY this heatsink will give you 40C at the CPU. The following table lays out what to expect for a 100 watt CPU:

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As the table shows, the higher your case temp (and fan inlet temp), the hotter the CPU temp. It's no wonder that many are finding fresh air ducts to be a very effective solution at lowering CPU temps. Effective CPU cooling requires BOTH a good heatsink and airflow through the case.

To test out how much case temp impacts your system, open the side of the case, aim a house fan at the motherboard and record temps under stress. This is "best case" for airflow through the case.

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Its worth a shot.

How many fans taking air in? how many fans blowing air out? and what are their location?

2 in front are intakes, 1 side panel intake, 2 rear out and ps fan out

I dont have a fan but I did pull the side panel . I let pc sit there and the cpu temp dropped to 33.5c, system temp was at 40c . Think I had my original temps switched. I let it run Seti@home for a couple hours,, cpu temp went up to 40c and sys temp up to 44c . Killed Seti and let system cool then I tried running Far Cry again with everything max'd, got about 1 1/2 hours out of it. Dropped game settings to "High" instead of "Very High" and left video card settings max'd,, ran for 3 hours. Got me wondering if I dont have a combination of issues. One,, air flow not good enough and possibly the 9700pro cant handle Far Cry on "Very High " settings for too long then overheats. Unless I can drop the internal case temp down about 10 degrees, guess I will have to play with mediocre setting.

do you have any holes in the case? like heat vents at the top of the sides? sounds like you're not getting a good seal inside the case..... you have enough fans so that shouldn't be the problem. How are you doing with wire management? are hdd blocking the air from the front intake?

I have no air vents in the sides and no blowhole fan. I am using rounded cables and have them tucked off to the side. The top front fan is set up to blow around my scsi drive, the bottom one is clear. I do have the side panel on tight. Could it be ps not strong enough to drive system plus 5 fans,, its a 400w ?

Why don't you try taking the video card out of the equation and see what happens.
Button her up and run Prime or Folding for several hours and see if the machine still locks up.
If not, then you need to concentrate on the video card cooling...there are several solutions available.

Well, I think it is definitly the video card getting hot. I can run the game for hours at lower settings. My original question was actually to try to cool the video card or to cool the whole case,, not sure which is the best way to go. I can play PainKiller for 5 hours or so and not have a problem. Its either the card just cant handle Far Cry's 'very high' settings or at those settings its overheating and I need to cool it down.