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By "Burnt up", do you mean your machine actually smoked, or just stopped working?
The Dreamcast design is quite poor and as such there is very little heat elimination incorporated into the design. They have a fan on the right side of the machine, but it doesn't appear to be adequate in some cases. I opened up my DC once and discovered there is no heatsink touching the two large chips on the board which I believe are video and CPU chips. On my board those chips had some gray silicone-type rubbery sheets attached to the tops (presumably heatsink material), although I don't think this material touched the underside of the shield (which I believe doubles as a heatsink, due to the thickness of one part of the shield).
This poor design appears to be the cause of at least MY Dreamcast's overheat problems. I haven't opened it again, but I have plans to try to improve the heatsink capabilities on those two chips at some point - perhaps by adding a thin piece of metal to the shield that will touch the chip (more solidly). In the meantime, however, I was able to get my machine to work for extended periods (longer than 5 minutes!!) by turning the machine over on its left side with the fan port pointing upward, and put a box fan beside the machine, blowing on the bottom of the DC. This has worked for me.
It may be too late for your DC, but if you decide to replace it, keep the fan idea in mind if it ####ts to act up (locking up while playing for a while, etc).
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