Random freezes/lockups even with some new hardware.

Hello, I come seeking advice on what may be my problem.

if this is posted in the wrong forum, a mod is more than welcome to move it accordingly, I do not know what causes the problem, only that it is most likely some hardware.

I will start by explaining the problem, which begun a while ago.

A few weeks ago, I started experienceing random freezes/lockups on my homebuilt PC, it had been working fine for over a year and out of the blue it just starts freezing on me randomly while in windows, not even while doing anything in particular, just while browing the web or listening to music and even when just idling.

After I tried to resolve the issue myself (to no avail I might add) by running memtest86+ for 24 hours (7 whole passes on 16GB of RAM) and it showed no errors, replacing my SSD with a new one thinking it was to blame, replacing my CPU cooler with a new one (noticed my CPU ran a bit on the hot side while idle), and of course reinstalling windows entirely. None of these steps helped, so I accepted defeat and turned my PC in to my local repair shop. After a few days I get a call from the shop saying that he managed to solve the issue by removing both my graphics card and my SATA HDD, and that it ran fine withut them for 27 hours straight with no freezes.

Knowing I still had warranty left on both my HDD and my graphics card, I contacted my place of purchase and requested an RMA for both.

After a few days of back and forth I was cleared to recieve a full refund for my graphics card, which would be more than enough to buy a new graphics card, a new PSU and a new PC case, which I did.

Now as I am writing this on my "new" PC (same PC, new components.) I just experienced another freeze/lockup! Windows event log shows nothing of significance (what I can tell), I also have "Who Crashed" installed and it doesn't give me any logs of what happened either. I am not overclocking anything at all, everything is running on stock levels. What baffles me most about this problem is why it just seemingly out of the blue starts happening after working fine for over a year? The only thing I can think of that I changed before it all started happening was a setting in bios to enable me to start my PC by using a keyboard command (a setting that did not work because my keyboard is a USB one, and thus I restored that setting to its default value afterwards).

I tried updating the chipset drivers now, but it said my version was up to date, also my SSD had the latest firmware installed (R211).

No other hardware connected currently, my optical drive was damaged so that is not connected, and I am still waiting for RMA on my HDD so that is not connected either.

I am at my wits end about this, and do not know what to do, or what could be wrong.

My hardware currently is as follows:

PSU: XFX XXX Pro series 850W

GPU: Sapphire R9 280x 3GB OC Dual-X

CPU: Intel i5 3550 3,3 GHz

RAM: Corsair 8GB DDR3 1600MHz/CL9/VENGEANCE & 8GB of the same memory type except a higher clock frequency I believe, total 16GB RAM.

MOBO: Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 Rev 1.3

SSD: SanDisk SSD Extreme 120 GB

SATA III, Sandforce SF-2200

Running windows 7 ultimate 64-bit, latest stable bios version installed (F12 I believe).

Any help or recommendations what to do next are very welcome, the only thing I can think of that is left is the motherboard being the culprit?

Please excuse my somewhat broken english, it is not my first language.

Thank you in advance.

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