chicagoskiguy

Thank you for all the suggestions. I'm still not entirely sure what preciesly the problem was, but I assume that something was touching somewhere. I ended up pulling all the cards, removing the motherboard, and the reassembling everything. I still get an occasional pop, but it's 99.9% better.

Not sure if anyone has any ideas, but I'm having a similar problem with speaker buzz. When the PC sound card is hooked up to the speakers, there is serious buzz. unplug the PC and plug in an MP3 player, and it's very clear. If you shut down the PC, still same buzz. Unplug the PC (no power cord for 5 minutes or so), same buzz. Unseat the card from the unplugged pc, and the buzzing stops. If the card were bad, seems like the buzzing would continue with the card unseated. If grounding were at fault, seems like unplugging it from the wall would halt the buzz. Anyone have any ideas on this?