What are the symptoms? With that DCUII dumping heat all over the card it's possibility, but more likely to be a fault on the card itself. Can you ghetto tape a fan pointing at it to see if that resolves the problem?
After a while playing DayZ i start to get crackling.. like the sound you get from an empty packet of crisp's. Also i get reports from other TeamSpeak users my mic can sound like a motorbike been thrashed... but when i record something with the mic, its clear as day. This only happens after a while of playing. Latest drivers installed Maybe use somthing like this? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PCI-Blowe...mputing_Networking&hash=item1e76b06b14&_uhb=1
I was thinking a spare fan rested to blow air over it before you spend any money - heat might not be the issue so it would be a shame to waste money if it's actually a bad capacitor or something...
1- Remove mic from sound card, 2- Lower mic to minimum and mute it Does it solve your crackling problem? If so, then you are not alone. It seams that the lower end ASUS Xonar has trouble coping with last gen GPU's when they are under load. I don't know if the Essence STX has the same problem as well, while I have it, I only have a GTX 260. Attach your mic to your onBoard sound card, or use a USB mic like the one in web cams.