Bios ticking?

Hi i'm posting about my 2nd PC... i've been running the MSI for about 100 hours, after a week of nightmares trying to set it up all seemed to be running well until i tried to run Q3. Major crashage occured, upon resetting the screen came back in dark :/ I powered it down at this point gave it 2 min then booted up again. Entering windows it ran scandisk and all seemed stable again. Fired up winamp and opened the visualisation, my pc was making a crackling noise I have never heard a pc make this noise before :/ So out of windows and into the bios. Whilst viewing the health status i can hear something ticking inside my pc as the readings change, it then crashes out of the bios (so now i'm like WTF m8) heeeeeeelp I realy dont know whats going on with this mobo.

Well, my mobo crackled when I had it oc'ed without a HS on my southbridge, but that wouldn't make your computer crash.

What usually is the case is temperature or not enough vcore if you're oc'ing. If you have the old BIOS (3.6) w/ a Prescott, it may be reading temps that are higher than they actually are and then shutting down your computer. Are you using the stock HS on the Prescott?

BTW, have you seen a temp shutoff on this BIOS? I can't recall if it's there or not... if so, you could try changing it. I'm leaning towards heat for the shutoff b/c it happened while you were gaming, and Prescotts run really hot as it is.

Ticking.... I've never heard ticking from my mobo... my brother's mobo makes a loud humming noise when it's under load, but I can't recall ever hearing ticking. Have you tried the MSI forums yet? They might be able to help you over there as well.

Sorry about the problems you're having and I hope you're able to fix them soon.