This has been bothering me for a while. After a few minutes of playing any newer game, my monitor will go black and tell me there is no connection. The sound usually loops at that point and I can do nothing but hard reset.

I've been trying to find an answer online and thought my psu was the problem, so I bought a new one (now at 550 watts), but that hasn't helped. My computer is pretty old, (the processor is an AMD athlon 3500) with an updated graphics card, (BFG nVidia 9600 oc).

Any advice? Is it a temperature problem or just the result of an old processor? What other info can I provide that may aid in finding a solution?

So are you over colcking the BFG video card? If you are, try cutting out the over clocking

I believe the card he is using is factory overclocked, which should work fine granted it's running @ factory spec. If you are trying to run newer games, make sure the first thing you do is look for driver updates and hotfixes. The drivers that came shipped with the card are most-likely obsolete and you should make a habit of updating regularly, at least when a new title is released. Also, makes sure you are running the latest version of DirectX and that you meet minimum requirements of each game you are trying to run.

That is not a audio issue. That's your comp OC that is not stable.

Try going to stock clocks and raising the fan speed via ATI tray tools , and see what happens. I can ashure you this is not a audio issue or driver issue. gl