9700 pro instability

Hello.

I am trying to get a radeon 9700 pro to work in my system; NF7-S (v2.0), xp1600-m, 2x256mb pc2700.

Basically to start with the 9700 heat sink is a bit sketchy as the pins dont seem to hold it on very firmly, it doesnt fall off, but doesnt seem to be as tight as you may expect.

I uninstalled my old drivers, put the card in, booted back up, installed the latest ati drivers. Restarted, the screen went on standby just as it got to the password screen, then restarted again, i got to the password screen and it crashed, on the 3rd time got to the password screen, started to install 3dmark 2k1 (to test for stability/artifacts); but it crashed half way through the installation.

I was wondering if this would be down to the heatsink being a bit sketchy, or if infact the card is knackered?

And my PSU is a 350watt Antec

Any insight would be much appreciated.

Thanks very much
Will.

On further investigation, it looks like the heatsink is causing it to be unstable. So i was wondering where/how much a decent cooler would be? i dont want anything too loud, but something that will keep it cool. ty

arctic cooler should do you nicely :)

its much better than the stock one, is much quieter than the stock one and costs less than a tenner, what more could you want :D

Arctic cooler should do the trick since it's designed to fit even with the 9700's notorious shim in place. Currently the core is probably not making good contact with the heatsink because the original thermal goo was removed and the shim sits high enough to stop it from making proper contact.
You should avoid running it with the currently bad heatsink since they do often die from heat damage (I've seen two dead 9700 pros, tragic).
If you want to avoid spending money on it, just make sure the fan is still running on that heatsink and google up on how to remove the shim (I've done it on a couple, it just has to be done with a thin blade and carefully) then check that it all works using that. Otherwise the card may still be failing.

Check my sig, I don't even need a fan for my card :P