I think I broke my sound card...?

[Windrunner]

Okay, so a few weeks ago I'm listening to a song I've heard a million times, and my speakers ( Logitech Z-5500s ) are crackling.

I figured out that when I turned my system volume down and turned the Z-5500s up, the crackling was diminished. They are currently hooked up via analog.

Well, that made me assume that my sound card - a Xonar D2X - was acting up. But since it seemed to be fixed with my system volume at 50%, I decided to just live with it.

However, it's gotten worse today. Now I'm at 30% and having the occasional crackle and pop. This is really concerning to me, to understate it. I know my sound card has interchangeable opamps, so that's a possible repair. I also know that it has a direct feed from my PSU to minimize noise, and that a noisy component on the same rail could be causing this. Considering it's getting progressively worse, I'm thinking I might have a fan or HDD problem.


Where should I start on troubleshooting this? Personally, I'm going to go clean out my case and see if dusting it helps. It's pretty bad.

[Windrunner]

Problem solved, it appears. Cleaned case out, found the power plug for the card had been bent slightly, straightened it out, moved all the fans off of the cable from the PSU that went to the sound card - it has its own power cable now, and I moved my USB headers over away from it in case those cause interference.