which port should my SATA be in?
 

I didnt think that it mattered so i just put the SATA drive in one of the top row of slots on my mobo, it turns out its in port 2 of 4. So ive been having trouble with my creative x-fi card crackling, and so im wondering if maybe my drive should actually be in port 1 or does it not matter?

It should not matter. Crackling could be bad grounding or some driverissue.

To fix this crackling problem you have a Nforce 4 board?

Go to your bios look for a PCI latency setting, the change it to 16 or 32,or 64 and so on till it goes away. I hope this helps you.

thanks but i dont have the nforce board. actually i have tried 2 soundblasters (x-fi, audigy2), and my onboard sound, and all seem to crackle in games

if u have an nf4 chipset, thats the cause of your crackle-pop noises, yeah, creative suck monkey balls. if you have the option try a pci latency adjustment in your bios, or swap the pci slot the card is in.