Xonar DX static through microphone while gaming...

[Creamsteak]

Looking for a little help if anyone has any good ideas here.

I have a Xonar DX that I hook up to my front panel sound output that feeds into a surround sound headphones set with a microphone.

When I'm watching a movie or listening to music, I don't get any static. Everything sounds good.

When I'm browsing the web and I scroll up or down with the mouse there is a very slight electronic noise that can be heard. It's not mouse related as I can get the static by grabbing the bar slider and moving it around or hitting the up and down arrows.

When I'm playing Left 4 Dead 2 or WoW I'm getting a constant sound of static to my ears through the headset. Turning on "smart volume" makes it worse, and manually turning the system volume and mic-boost down a lot makes it significantly less problematic but still present.

When I use the microphone and I'm not also in a game, my sound goes through crystal clear.

When I use the microphone and I'm in a game, I get the static sent out to the listeners.

The video card is located a slot below the sound card. The only other configuration I have available to me is to put the sound card below the video card (which blocks the video cards fan pretty well and hurts the air intake).

This was not a problem a week ago, but I had to reinstall the audio drivers after I screwed them up playing around with some settings and now have this problem. I've tried multiple re-installs since then without any success.

I also tested through the port coming out of the sound card on the back of the computer to verify that it wasn't anything related to the front panel connection.

Troubleshooting Checklist
Headphones - probably not as they work crystal clear 90% of the time.
Front Panel - probably not as I've also tested the card itself with the same results.
Game Settings - It's across multiple games and devices, though WoW is clearly the worst offender. I've tried a lot of settings but no trouble. To further test, I ran the game with '-nosound' on and I still get the static noise, which is another reason I thought it might be noise from the video card carrying over.
Driver - Maybe, but I've installed the latest driver and even uninstalled and reinstalled to test again.
Audio Center - Maybe, I've tried a lot of settings but nothing seems to have a noticeable effect (besides lowering the volume of the devices)
Sound Card - Could be, or could be something related to the video card being too close to the sound card, or some other random noise located nearby - but seems inconsistent.
Video Card - I thought maybe it was that the video card was making the noise, but I would think that would also effect movies.

[Mentawl]

I get the same thing with my Xonar using the front panel connections - when the 3D card is under load, I get a decent amount of background noise/squeeling/hissing etc through my headphones. I use a seperate USB heatset for voicechat, so I can't comment on the mic. Don't have any issues with using the rear panel connectors, though.

[just brew it!]

When you tested via the rear jacks to try and rule out the front panel connection as the source of the noise, did you completely disconnect the front panel audio wiring from the soundcard? Because if it is a noise pickup issue with the front panel wiring, just using the rear jack while leaving the front panel wiring connected to the card isn't going to tell you anything useful.

Are you sure you reinstalled the same version of the audio drivers you were using before?

Has anything else about this system changed over the past week?