E1505/ 6400 Motherboard or Ram going bad?

I purchased this laptop about 3 years ago and up until a few months ago it was a well capable laptop. Since the original purchase I put 2 gigs of Ram in and a new higher capacity HD and thats about it.

Around a year ago I started noticing the audio skipping on everything. Youtube, all video file types, mp3's and flacs. It didn't really bother me at the time because it was a skip or static sound every several seconds. Now more recently it is once every second and really bothering me. I went as far as to reformat the computer with Windows 7 and Vista 2 times (and reinstalling fresh drivers for my sigma-tel hardware) but still the skipping/ static continues to get worse. Is this a sign of damage in the CPU, Ram or Motherboard? Granted it is probably time for a new laptop seeing this one is 3+ years old but I originally spent $1,400 on it so I just want to be sure before I move on

I have
1.86Ghz processor
2gb Ram
180gb HD
sigmatel integrated HD audio

 

Sound clicks usually appear when the CPU is full load and doesn’t have enough resources for audio. Maybe the CPU is overheating, a cause might be the thermal paste between the CPU and cooler is going bad.

 

I forgot to also mention that video skips also. Probably doesn't change the problem, just gives me an idea of how bad its getting. I take it there is no way to repair or examine the paste between cooler on my own (out of warranty)?

I'm also skeptical that it could be over heating because it begins as soon as I boot up the laptop

 

Those skips might also come from the hard drive. Make sure the HDD is set in UDMA mode and not PIO. If it is PIO remove the IDE drivers and let Windows reinstall them again. If this isn’t the cause then I don’t know what it is.