Issues with motherboard?

So I use an MSI Mpower Z77 motherboard, but it's having a few issues.

Whenever I start up my PC, I just get a black screen with the mouse for a few seconds, and I have to wait for the computer to get to the start screen.

When I play games, I get random BSOD's which say the computer has shut down to prevent damage or critical data has been modified. I used BlueScreenViewer to see and it was something along the lines of Ntoskrnl.exe, but I'd rather not get into all of that.

The motherboard is the only part of the computer I have kept with all the blue screens happening, apart from the PSU. 

Today, the sound cut out from my computer completely. I had to wiggle my headset around to see if it was going to work, it would work half way in the slot. And then when I play music out of my speakers, nothing comes out at all. My friend said it sounds like the motherboard might be failing, but it's only 9 months old - my luck eh?

Boils down to one question; can a motherboard cause blue screens?

a motherboard can definitely causing a bluescreen offcourse, if you also having wierd sound issues, then there might be something wrong, what you could try is to uninstall all drivers and download the latest ones from the msi website and install those, also look at the gpu drivers as well.

But it could be that the motherboard is causing troubles, you could try to take the motherboard out of the case lay it on its box install the gpu cpu ram and you harddrive connect the psu, and fire it up outside the case, just to look if you still having issues. could be that some standoff or a screw, or maybe a lip of the io shield causing some short cirquits, this also results in strange behaviour and bluescreens.

If you cannot seem to find the solution, just RMA the board, contact MSi about it, theire Mpower line of boards are theire highend line of boards, if there is something wrong with your build, i definitly think that msi, will rma the board very quickly.

But it could also be something with the GPU drivers, which gpu do you have by theway?

before you do anything, update the bios and drivers, and reset any overclock you have to default settings... if that doesn't solve the problem... then proceed as angel said... 

I've tried everything now, I've tried updating the BIOS and every driver, I'm still getting BSODs. The sound on the board went too, the I/O or the front ports don't have any sound output, so I'm going to have to RMA the board.