messed up sound....need help :(

[El-Scotto]

Sometimes while playing games like halo and World of Warcraft my sound gets messed, it becomes all crackly and the only way to fix it is restarting the application...its rather annoying. Anyone got any idea how i can fix this? I dont have a sound card and my mobo is a nf7-s rev 2.0 Any help is appreciated :)

*edit*
also it happens while using musicmatch jukebox...

[Radical]

Do you have any cooling on the southbridge? If not then put some kind of heatsink on there ASAP. The Zalman NB47J works well for this application, and you just need to attach it with something like Arctic Silver Alumina Adhesive or Arctic Silver Adhesive.

[El-Scotto]

ive got two fans and the bottom of my case blowing air towards it i think :pother than that nope....i wouldve never guessed it to be a heating issue, could you reccomend a water block at all since i will be wc'ing this soon?

[Radical]

I think a passive heatsink on the southbridge should be fine and I think a waterblock on it would be overkill. Also, I'm not sure how you would attach a waterblock to the southbridge since it doesn't have any mounting holes. Also, water cooling the SB would just reduce the pressure of the entire system, which would mean less cooling efficiency for the CPU and CPU.

[El-Scotto]

doh im a noob to wc'ing i think i got the nb and sb mixed up :p or maybe im just wrong on everything :p thx for the help i was just hoping that it was some outdated bios patch or something that i could just dl to fix :(

[Radical]

Well you could always try updating to your motherboard's latest BIOS, but most of the time the crackling sound is caused by the southbridge overheating on nForce2 chipsets. I've actually got a NB47J (it might not be this color, but it's the exact same design and material) that you can have if you pay for shipping. A couple of the fins things on it are a little bent, but other than that it's in pretty good condition.