Random PC crash issue

[oxolotl]

Hi all, 3 questions here.

1)
I'm having an issue that I am having at the moment with my PC. It has happened when i haven't been in the room, and therefore nothing was running. I come back upstairs, and it sounds like it is running but no picture will come up. I then turned the speakers on by accident and found there was massive feedback noise coming out of them. My partner then experienced this while she was browsing the internet and I was out of the house.

I have no clue whether this is an overlock issue, a sound card issue, an overheating issue or just a random crash...the sound is real strange one though.

System is:

Be Quiet! Darkpower Pro 750W PSU
MSI P45D3 platinum motherboard
E8600 CPU at ~4Ghz
4GB OCZ PC3-10666 ReaperX HPC Enhanced Bandwidth running at around 1333 (iirc will check later) at recommended timings
Zotac GTX 280
Samsung Spinpoint 1TB HDD
edit - forgot to say running Vista 64 bit
edit - Sound card is Auzentech x-fi prelude

I have had issues getting this to a stable boot before, but has seemingly been fine for a little while now.

2)
As an aside, After playing intensive games for 30mins-1hr i find that the psu does make a reasonable amount of noise and this doesn't really go back to being quiet - is this normal?

3)
I am trying to work out what could be a good upgrade for this set up as I am worried that this motherboard may be an issue. If i did go for a mobo upgrade, i would probably go for core i7. If not then my attention has been drawn to getting a SSD for a general performance impact - would this be sensible as my system is fairly good for most things at the moment?

 

[oxolotl]

I'll check out system temps and do the other bits today, doesn't seem to be too hot in there and cpu/gpu are reasonably cool.

As far as the PSU goes, it is designed to be able to handle getting warm? so i assume this shouldn't be an issue...hopefully!

 

[oxolotl]

Well as i said, it has been stable for a while now (approx 3 months) and was just very concerned about the loud sound coming out of the speakers when it crashes.

Any overclocking/instability issues i've encountered before this have just crashed and computer has shut down/restarted - along with any BSOD errors i've head through graphics driver type issues.

The only thing i can think of is that i run the computer on a belkin surge adaptor, the PSU is not on this as it wouldn't boot first time (something to do with actually needing a little surge of power getting going). Could having the other hardware (monitor/speaker etc) be the cause of the feedback?

 

[oxolotl]

Well i was wondering about that, but hadn't heard of any problems really with the prelude, could the sound card itself overheat and cause those issues?

 

[oxolotl]

Well i've recently changed the bits in my PC to a core i7 set up and it isn't overclocked right now as have just got it going.

Same thing happened, haven't even done any gaming and it locked up/graphics card at 50 or less degrees so assuming that ain't it.

I'm gonna take out the sound card and see if get it again in the next week, as it is a bit sporadic when it happens.