Just so you know , there's no such thing as "idling in the menu" , in fact , it's much worse than a torture test . You can try it youself , just launch (let's say sacred 2 , because you're on XP , right? So no DX11 for you) and you will see the card clocks going higher and higher with every second . Now look at the frames , it could go to 300Fps and higher ! So I suggest to turn the sync ON . And even with Vsync ON it will still torture your card , and I advise against its . You might want to skip the menu and go play as fast as you can ! I once went to make a coffee and left Road Redemption (DX11 game) in the main menu . I can't even start to describe the heat that came out of the Black Titan . I guess it was 5-7 minutes tops.