Help with a freezing video card

[kandrathe]

The kind of freezing you are experiencing my gut tells me is memory related. Find any old video card, or buy a cheapo $25 dollar one. Test the system, using something like Sisoft Sandra. http://www.sisoftware.net/

Another good memory shakedown, as well as to determine if your processor is not the culprit would be to use a compression program to zip a very large file (bigger than your memory anyways). This is very intense on the processor. Once you have proven to yourself that the system is robust without the video card, then you can turn to the video card.

If it is your video card, then you might try to upgrade the GPU cooler, and add heatsinks to the memory on the GPU (usually 8).

If it is your mobo/processor/ram you need to figure out if it is ram alone, or the mobo/processor. If it is the ram, all I can suggest is to get more but better quality. If it is the mobo/processor then it could be that the tuning has been set too aggressivly, or that some critical componets are overheating. Again, you might try heat sinks on any hot exposed chips without heatsinks.