Probalby more of bad bearings in the fan. This may be causing the fan not to speed up enough to cool the power supply resulting in the OTP (over temp protection) to kick in.
When one of the balls in the ball bearing runs out of the race, or there was not one there to begin with, it may bang around and make this crackling sound.
If it was arcing, this psu would have fried, or tripped the SCP (short circuit protection)

Delta is my 1st choice in power supplies
Biostar Tpower N750 (all UCC solid caps) 5000+ dual core PNY 9800gt 4gb OZC DDR2-800 320gb WDC 700W Delta DPS-700