Hello, i have the exact same problem, when i play games just freezes, but before the freeze something clicks and i think FANs stop and turn on again. Happened to me only with games that requires more resources, with old games it's ok.

Happened with:
TES IV: Oblivion
Fallout 3 (all of them)
Metro 2033
Mafia II (only with this i got BSOD KERNEL_DATA_IMPAGE_ERROR)
Stalker CoP
Heroes V
Darksiders

But strange that after those sounds in PC i can look around in games before it needs to load anything new, then it freezes or crashes.

Specs:
ADM Athlon 5600+ 2.80 GHz
2 GB of RAM
GeForce GTX 460
500 GB hardrive
420W PSU