Installed on Fresh SSD, playing Civ V -- and Frozen PC

[Gnarmonkey]

Hi guys. My system is a touch old, so old that AMD was no longer releasing drivers for Vista and I could only play Civ V in Directx 9 mode.

So. I think I like 7. But. A little bit ago, after installing several games from Steam, I froze mid-game in Civ V. No sound, mouse unable to move -- nothing.

System:
AMD Phenom II 720 Black Edition /w giant tower cooler
Asus M4A79T Deluxe Mobo
Seasonic M12D PSU
Radeon 6870 Graphics Card (Yes, the one that sounds like you're inside a wind tunnel)
8 GB RAM
New Windows 7 install on New 1TB Mushkin SSD

Any idea what might have caused it? How do I diagnose this and prevent it from happening again?

 

[Andrei N]

Did this occur several times or was it an isolated incident ?

 

[Gnarmonkey]

Just once so far. My comp refused to load/play anything using DX 10 or 11 while I ran Vista. This is the first time I've been able to play it (yay 7!), except for about 10 minutes earlier.

 

[Andrei N]

Well if it happened only once it might've been a fluke.
It was a system freeze most likely caused by a read/write error from RAM to disk. Winows 7 still has those. However if you want to use your SSD to it's fullest I recommend upgrading to 8.1, this will also increase stability.