I think I have a heat problem because after a while, BattleField 2 freezes for around 20 sec and then resumes. It is quite cool in the basement, but I cannot lick this problem.

But first, here is my system:

4 Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives
1 ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
1 Antec 120mm Case Cooling Fan
1 Antec LifeStyle SONATA II ATX Mid Tower Case
1 eVGA 256-P2-N517-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card
1 AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor
1 MITSUMI Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive
1 NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner
1 Microsoft Windows XP Professional With SP2
1 SAMSUNG Combo Drive Black IDE
1 ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro Cooling Fan with Heatsink
1 CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 433 TWINX2048-3500LLPRO
1 Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 ATX12V 550W Power Supply
1 CREATIVE SOUND CARD X-FI PLATINUM
Right off the bat my PC would function fine, so long as I did not try to do anything with video. Media player, games, an PC Mark all made my PC freeze. However, it has NEVER crashed...

I turned off the PEG link the MB BIOS which was stopping me from running PC Mark and games period.
Removing the side panel, adding a front intake fan, as well as 2 rear slot exhaust fans helped a bit.
Then I changed the RAM from Patriot to the Corsair above - no difference.
And finally got a new heatsink and fan - the Artic Cooler. This drastically reduced my idle temps to 40C for the Asus and 39C for the CPU with the side panel off, but the problem still exists.
My GeForce 7800GT OC idles at 42C with an alarm at 115C which is default in the nVidia control panel. The GPU alarm has never sounded.
I have SATA drives, so small cables. The IDE cables are out of the airflow path.
My A8N32 heat alarm through Asus Probe II sounded yesterday, but I was still able to play. I think a temp of only 45C is causing my CPU to stop responding.

What SHOULD my fanless mobo temperature be? And the Athlon 64 X2 temperature?!

Anyone have any ideas?

Try here first and see if this will help.

http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_1.html

Been there...but I will look again.

Try this, while you're in the game, at the main menu. Hit cntrl+alt+delete, look for the battlefield/front2 executable in the task manager. Right click on it, goto set affinity, and uncheck cpu 1. Try that, might be crashing due to some issue with the dual core, unlikely but worth a shot. I know I have to do that when I'm playing battlefront 2 . Not sure about battlefield 2....

I had the exact same problem for BF2 with a dual core CPU and A8n32-SLI. Here are some steps u can try:

1. Have you tried the dual core fix? Install the newest drivers for AMD Dual Core off the AMD site then do the Microsoft Hotfix.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=983781

2. Is your video card overclocked? I have the n517 from evga which i clocked down to 450/1100. Try that. Use Coolbits to tweek ur video card clocks.

3. Is your system overclocked? Go to ur Bios and try lowering the speed ur ram is being run at. Add a divider under 200 (ie 183). Also make sure ur K8->NB is somewhere between 800-1000 (4x or 5x depending on ur FSB) 16up16down, and NB->SB is about the same 800-1000, 16up 16down.

Let me know if any of this works.

Biz