Yeah. I did get it running again, but it crashed after 10 mins again. I'm going to try a reinstall of BACON, but I'm not holding out much hope. All disks scan fine now though, so maybe I'll go back to fiddling with RAM.
My machine would have random crashes and slightly odd behaviour just before my PSU blew up in a messy fashion. Since I replaced it I have had no such problems, it might be worth trying a different one if you happen to have one kicking around (especially as you're hearing crackly noises)
The horrible noises are from the speakers rather than the case, but either way I don't have a spare PSU kicking around. It's an option I've considered, which is why I checked all the mobo voltages, but I'm not going to start shelling out on hardware until I've run out of options.
Well BACON servers are down until lunch time for maintenance, but I played about 15 mins of Stalker with no problem other than it slowing down a lot. Looks like it was doing a lot of page file work, so I probably need more RAM. Unfortunately a matching pair to the ones I've got in at the moment are £75
I might be able to remedy it a little by taking some of the stability options off the RAM timings though.
EDIT: For my own reference when I need to find it again, the RAM part number is ocz3p13332gk
Oddly enough when I tried that nothing happened, it just opened a firefox window that wouldn't load. I just looked in the case at the sticker on the RAM instead. Quick release cases ftw.