Hi.

I Googled the text of one of the errors messages; 60 hits, one of which was:
Dec 7 05:59:51 stams kernel: EXT3-fs error (device sda1) in ext3_ordered_writepage: IO failure

hm, any error messages from the device-driver? in most cases are hardware issues the reason for I/O errors

http://www.redhat.com/archives/ext3-.../msg00004.html
No hits mentioned SuSE, so I don't think it's distribution-specific.

Many of the hits were deep into kernel stuff, way beyond me.

So if you've tried swaps with known good equipment into different slots, then that suggests the bus, the MB, the BIOS. Unlikely the power-supply.

Ugh, tough, time-consuming problem.

Again, best wishes, keep us posted ... cheers, drl