New Computer Freezing, loud fan noise, hard restart

Hi,

I have a Brand new computer that has frozen twice.  I believe I was on Photoshop each time, but I might have been on Illustrator the first time.  A couple of weeks went between each freeze.  On the second freeze, the computer was making a very loud continuous whirring noise, that I assume was the fan.  Each time I had to hard restart.

It is an Acer with intel i7 processor, 24gb memory, 250gb ssd and 1t harddrive, Nivida GTX1050 graphics card.

I have 2 months left to return it to costco.  ...but I don't think I can swap it out as they no longer have this deal on their website ... I got this for $850, which was by far the best deal I could find.

Any suggestions on how to diagnose?

Thanks so much.

take it back while you can

We can work on diagnostics here - but how long it takes is up to you.

Please run these free hardware diagnostics:  http://www.carrona.org/hwdiag.html
Please run ALL of the tests and let us know the results.
FYI - These are the tests and what we usually see for the reports:

1 - Antivirus/antimalware scans:  In short, if there are Trojans or other serious malware - start over in the Am I Infected forums
2 - Memory diagnostics:  Run MemTest86+ for at least 3 passes.  If booting from UEFI, run MemTest86 instead.  Let us know if there were any errors reported
3 - Hard Drive diagnostics:  Don't sweat the details here.  In short, run the Seagate Seatools Long/Extended test from a bootable disk.  If unable to run it from a bootable disk (UEFI and some others), then run the Seagate Seatools for Windows from within Windows.  There are no diagnostics for SSD's, just run the Crystal Mark tests and let us know if there were any failures
4 - Furmark:  run the test until the temperature stabilizes.  Don't let it get much over 90ºC.  Let us know the temp it stabilizes at and if there were any problems running the test (other than slowness).
5 - Prime95:  run the Blend test for 24 hours (this may not be possible, but run it as long as you can.  Look for errors in the output, or for problems running the test (freezes/crashes)
6 - Video 2 (other video tests):  there's several tests here.  Run all of them.  I'm especially interested in the Video Memory Test.  Let us know the results of the test(s)
  - A - simtek.org memtest
  - B - Video memory stress test
  - C - Artifact Locator
  - D - OCCT - 4 built in tests for CPU, GPU, PSU
  - E - Video Memory Stress Test
7 - CPU tests:  run at least one test on your CPU and let us know the result.

 

A clean install is:
- Windows is installed to a freshly partitioned hard drive with legitimate installation media (W10:  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 ).
- The installation media is only a copy of Windows, not the OEM recovery disks that you can make on some systems.
- Windows is fully updated after it's installed.  That's ALL updates - none excepted.
- NO 3rd party software is installed.
- There are no errors in Device Manager (if you find any, post back for suggestions).

This will wipe everything off of the computer, so it's advisable to backup your stuff first.
Also, it will wipe out all the special software that the OEM added to the system, so if you rely on any of that - let us know what it is so we can figure out a way to save/download it (the easiest way is to create/obtain the OEM;s recovery media)

If unable to find recovery media that has the software (or if you suspect that this is a hardware problem), you can make an image of your system that'll preserve everything in the state that it was in when you made the image.  You can also do this if you don't want to try another hard drive - yet you want to be able to return to the current system state.
One drawback to this is that you're making an image of a malfunctioning system - so, if there are errors in the system software, you'll have a nice copy of them
Another drawback is that the image of the system will be very large - so you'll most likely need a large external drive to store it on.
But, this will allow you to save everything on the hard drive (although you'll need an image viewer to get things out of the image).
The point here is that, if it's a hardware problem, then you can restore the system to the point it was when you made the image - after you repair the hardware problem.
You can obtain more info on imaging in the Backup/Imaging/DiskMgmt forums located here:  http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/f/238/backup-imaging-and-disk-management-software/

The point of doing this (the clean install) is to:
- rule out Windows as a problem (if the problem continues, it's not a Windows problem as you completely replaced Windows
- rule out 3rd party software (if the problem continues, it's not a 3rd party software problem as you didn't install any 3rd party software)
- so, if the problem continues, it must be a hardware problem.

OTOH, if the problem stops, then it was either a Windows or 3rd party software problem.  If the problem doesn't come back, then you've fixed it.  Then all that remains is setting the computer back up the way that you'd like it and importing your data from the backup you made.