Computer freezing diagnosis help

[accelerate]

Starting two nights ago, after 10-15minutes of booting up, my 3 month-old computer would freeze, the screen would go blank, and my vidcard would go to 100% fan speed (ie, much louder than usual). I have to hardboot to get my system back up. So far the longest my computer has been up since this started happening has been an hour. I haven't been doing anything that CPU/GPU intensive -- mostly websurfing, some Guild Wars. I downloaded the nVidia System Monitoring tools, and all temps (CPU/GPU/disk) hover between 20-35ºC. I do have the latest drivers. So I'm starting to think it's a hardware failure of some sort, so I want to figure out how. What's the best way of going about this? Thanks in advance!

System:
Intel i860
Asus P7P55D-Pro
G.Skill ECO Series 4GB (2x2GB)
Gigabyte GTX 460 1GB
WD 1GB Caviar Blue
Seasonic X650 PSU
Windows 7 64-bit

 

[mfenn]

Do you live on the north pole? I cannot imagine any other way that a GTX 460 would only be at 35C.

Do you have another video card to test with or another system that you can stick the 460 into?

 

[accelerate]

I have my old nVidia 6600GT I could try to stick into my new rig.

Someone else mentioned it might not be the vidcard at all, that the fan sped up simply because it was going into "airplane" mode in the event of a crash. He thinks it might be memory, so I guess I'll trying removing one stick and seeing how stable my system is then.

 

[mfenn]

I have my old nVidia 6600GT I could try to stick into my new rig.

Someone else mentioned it might not be the vidcard at all, that the fan sped up simply because it was going into "airplane" mode in the event of a crash. He thinks it might be memory, so I guess I'll trying removing one stick and seeing how stable my system is then.

The fan speeds of newer cards are controlled by the card's own BIOS. A system crash is unlikely to cause the fan to spin up. Definitely test with your 6600GT.

Remember, the key to effective troubleshooting is to only change one thing at a time!