Help with Computer Freezing!

Hi everyone. I've made posts before about this problem, and originally thought my 5970 was the problem. However, my old GPU (8800GT) freezes as well, and I've no idea why. Here's the problem:

Randomly (usually while playing games, but it's happened during voip and idle browsing of the web too) my computer completely freezes, forcing a hard reset. The freezing seems random: once, it happened 2 minutes after loading my desktop, and another time it froze after 1 hour of TF2. Another, it was while I was talking over Skype. It usually happens while gaming, however, or shortly after I turn off a game, and happens at least 3 times a day. Got this entire computer a month ago from NCIX, so all the components are new. The specs are:

2500k

8GB Corsair RAM

HD 5970

Realtek HD Sound

WD 640GB SATA

ASUS pz68-v-pro

I've tried changing the GPU, changing the RAM (and changing the RAM slots), plugging the SATA hard disk into another slot, changing the PCIe slot of the GPU, formatting Windows, other GPU and sound driver versions, etc.....

The PC's only a month old, and first thing I did was format, so thee weren't many programs there to cause freezes. As for drives, I only have 1 SATA drive connected (bought from a friend who doesn't need it anymore). He didn't mention any issues with it. I think my old computer has SATA ports...should I move the drive over there? As for the PSU, I had that connected by NCIX (1 year limited warranty, they connect computer), and the effort of disconnecting my old computer's PSU to connect it to my new one would take extraordinary effort .

I already ran memtest, and it failed on my RAM after like 30 minutes (though I tested later and it went 5 hours without error, can someone explain that?), so I bought a new TRENDNET stick and took out my old RAM....no improvement whatsoever. I tried different RAM slots as well. I haven't run a memtest on this new stick...should I even bother?

Strangly enough, usually when it freezes, if there's audio running, then it goes into this super slow motion static-y thing (hard to explain, but nothing responds and I have to hard reset). However, when I am playing Tales of Symphonia with Dolphin, the computer only hangs for a few seconds (5-6 seconds), but then it resumes It hanged like every 5 minutes or so, but then resumed. Also, a couple minutes ago it froze in idle, but then resumed operation after 3 minutes.

edit: Just was playing some Civ 5, and the computer would freeze every 7 minutes or so for 3 minutes, no response whatsoever, then would resume just to freeze again 7 minutes later.

Help :(. I DON'T GET IT! D=

I have been having the exact same issue across 2 sets of hardware over the last 6 months or so. I tried to find a solution but still haven't. I have a whole new PC now that I built (except the case which is old) and I had the issue once last week for the first time since my old PC.

I really want to know what it is. With my old hardware it got worse and worse until the PC wouldnt stay on for more than 5 minutes.

Edit: Go over to Tested.com and make a thread there (just copy and paste your post from here). They have a help forum and are much more knowledgeable.

How much Watt does your current power supply have? You need at least 650W for that 5970 to function properly.

If it helps I used to have a problem like this on an old computer, it would freeze after using it for a half hour or so, it turns out it was the hard drive that was failing. You said the HDD was not new maybe it could be the one causing it...

I would go into the bios and make sure your on board audio is set up right because it could be causing problems if something is not set right. Also make sure you have the right audio driver updated. I had a similar problem and that is what it turned out to be. Hopefully this helps.

@vdortizo: My similar problems with random freezing also ended up being related to the hard drive or the sata connector to the hard drive. Never had something like that sound issue, though. It just stops.