thanks again for the continued advice...

-as for usb settings in the bios...nothing much to set there... enable/disable.. and usb 2 versus 1.1.. naturally enable & 2 are where i'm at

-i would prefer to avoid using a pci nic as i only have 1 slot due to the sff case and at the moment i like it free because it's a vent for air to be drawn in for the cpu fan...and if i were to fill it it'd be with an aftermarket soundcard

-well...where i'm currently having the trouble (i'm housesitting for a while)...there is no router...direct connection to the adsl modem via cat5 using the onboard nic

-yeah the case is a sff but the results are the same with the temp at 16/17 deg celsius and at 22/23 (after i get home from work and turn the furnace on)...and similarly with the case on or off. I would also like to think that the thermalright xp90 and the panaflo 92mm fan cooling the cpu would be sufficient!?

-for what it's worth...the ip dropping problem has only manifested itself here at the housesitting place using cat5...it never occurred at home using the wireless.... BUT the problem with the entire network connection dropping (not simply the internet) occurs while using the wireless usb

-i do know that i was using my machine during christmastime at a friend's house through a router via cat5....and it was solid.... and i've since reformatted but everything is identical as newer official nforce3 drivers have not surfaced and i've formatted 1000 times before??? unless....somehow something weird may have happened during/after the install that i can't speculate on?