My computer overheats somewhat frequently, usually during intense use. And by intense use I mean browsing the internet while downloading, or gaming. It even overheats on extremely old games though, Master of Orion 2, which was developed for Windows 95.

My computer has a Pentium 4 Ghz processor, 2 GB of ram, and is running Windows XP.

One of the symptoms it has after overheating, is that it'll turn on immediately afterwards, but won't show any video on my monitor. I usually have to wait at least 5 minutes (mostly at least 10) before I can get it to turn on and show video on my monitor. I also usually have to wiggle around the graphics card a little bit, which is the ASUS A9550 Series with 256 MB.

I'm not sure exactly what is causing the computer to overheat. At first I thought it was the video card, but after I noticed it was doing it while playing Master of Orion 2, I'm not so sure, because that game can't be making the video card work all that hard.

So how exactly can I pinpoint the problem? Thanks for any help provided.

Edit: Okay I downloaded the programs that you specified, and will start benchmarking my system to try and pinpoint what's overheating. What is the temperature range for when it's getting to hot?

Also I have an abundant amount of software experience with computers, but unfortunately not to much hardware experience.