The problem is as follows, when playing an online MMO i experience a click sound coming from my computer tower (not really the hardware persay, more like the front of the tower where the restart/power buttons and lights are located) followed by a reduction in the speed of my CPU heatsink fan, when this problem occurs, in-game the screen freezes up (i can still move the mouse cursor, but the game GUI is unresponsive and frozen) momentarily, then resumes rendering as if nothin happened, sometimes (occuring more recently and frenquent) the computer stays in the lag/frozen state and my mouse cursor also freezes and can only be revived by a system restart. In addition to this problem, i have had un-explainable pixilation garbage which improves with the addition of more internal cooling fans and is fixed with a external box-fan.
System Specs:
Motherboard: ASUS P4P800E Deluxe
Grfx Card: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro256
RAM: 1Gb Kingston DDR 400
OS: WinXP
for the sake of explaination here are some screenshots of the "pixle garbage" that occur without the box-fan present to cool the machine
unassisted: http://img165.imageshack.us/my.php?image=grfxproblem2mk3.png
internal fans: http://img247.imageshack.us/my.php?image=s...tlyfixedhg3.png
any suggestions would be very helpful, as potential problems that might cause this i have considered the mobo/cpu or grfx card might be overheating (which would explain the improvements to the random pixil confetti) or possibly the powersupply is faulty, which explains the fanspeed reductions... in any event i just wanted a few opinions on the right fautly piece of hardware before i shell out some unnecessary cash on properly working stuff.