The exhaust should never been hot - warm sure but never hot. When was the last time you took a can of air to your PC? If the exhaust air coming out of your power supply feels hot, something is clogged. Same symptoms can be caused by heat as well. Sometimes the audio with skip over and over when it happens too, then go back to normal.
The easiest way to explain those issues, is your computer will just stop (everything, even mouse cursor) for a second or two then go on like normal. Windows uses your hard drive for virtual memory and if you don't have a free 500MB to 2-3 GB available depending on your settings, it locks up your CPU when the buffer is full. Possibly a hard drive buffer as well but that shouldn't happen unless it's really old running 5000 rpms or slower or just extremely full (95% +). Memory leaks are very common if you have lots of random things installed running in the back ground. Monitor your CPU and memory usage - sounds like of them is capping out.
