Glitches in OS X - memory or ssd?

The best thing with troubleshooting is to isolate the issue and keep good notes when the issue comes and when it goes.

Once you also have an understanding how to make the issue ( in your case, is that glitch constant or does it come and go ) it is then very easy to systematically isolate things.

In your case, switch the ram to the opposite slots, run with only one stick, then the others. Try to find out if it's the ram slot or the motherboard or the ram itself. Then you can isolate the sad by running a while on an external drive.

Repair technicians are very familiar with this process, and due to the volume of work they do, have better feel for what fails more often, have the tools to test booting your Mac from a clean OS externally, etc.

So even though you may not be as fast, skilled or familiar with troubleshooting by isolation, you can still use the same methodology to isolate this failure on your Mac.

First, make sure you are using ECC RAM with appropriate specs for your system. Then check if you are getting ECC Errors (About This Mac -> More Info -> [System Report if on Lion -> ] Memory). If there are no memory errors reported, it is not likely to be a RAM issue.

Based on my experience, the visual anomalies you show are most likely either a graphics card issue or a graphics card RAM issue, but that would not explain the failure of Skype to launch. Bad RAM would explain the failure of Skype to launch and the visual anomalies, so it would be my first guess, but if there are no memory errors reported, then I would expect something more seriously wrong with the motherboard.

The only way I see it being a problem with the SSD is if it were drawing so much power or creating so much noise on the power bus that it was interfering with proper operation of the motherboard.