I think I have found my problem. I would have posted this last night along with a pic, but we got 6+" of wet snow that then frose in my Direcway satelite dish which knocked out my internet connection at home. Hopefully we will get enough sun to melt it today. I pulled the card back out and went over it with a magnifying glass under brite light. What I found was where the w/b standoffs went through the pcb. There were no directions on the mounting of the bloc and I did something that I know better to do, but did it anyway. I did not put a plastic washer between the standoff and the pcb. I had looked at that but misjudged the space needed around the holes. There are some molded traces that run just close enough that when you turn the standoff to tighten it, it just scaped one fine trace line around each mount hole, scraping one and what looks like breaking the other. I am going to guess that one controls voltage to the gpu, and it is getting a bunch, because even just outputing the desktop, the caed is hot to the touch. That would explain why my case temps have risen so sharply. I KNOW better than to do what I did, it was just an oversight (an expensive one)in the excitement of the project. Now to find another vid card. I will probably just finad anothe 9800Pro. I don't see any justification for going to an XT for the $$$. Can someone tell me how, if it is possible, to remove the BGA ransinks off the broken card? They were mounted with AS Alumina Adhesive. Will the freezer trick work?
sorry if that came across the wrong way, but i wasnt even close to suggesting that i wanted to buy his equipment. but surely if for whatever reason he wanted to sell it, he could sell it, somewhere. 
