Solid color computer freeze

[Drool2]

Hello everyone. For some time now I had a problem I've been unable to resolve (or even find its causes).

Sometimes, totally randomly (it can be twice a day or twice a month) my screen turns into a solid color and computer freezes - becomes totally unresponsive. Colour of the screen depends strictly on the wallpaper's (and so - top and bottom of the screen's) colour. When I had a grey wallpaper - whole screen was grey-ish. Now I got a blue one - guess what - blue-ish!

When frozen, even hitting the reset button doesn't work (instantly, at least). PC reboots after ~30s. The temps are good - so it's not the case. Freezes always happen in non-stress situations, when a certain action is made - either a new tab in a browser is opened or a pop-up flashed (or something similar - so a new thing appears on the screen) - but it had never happened during watching a movie, playing a game, rendering or whatsoever.

I am totally sure it's not a software issue - I've had the problem before and after reinstalling Win7 64-bit (even though it had never happened to me in linux). My bet would be a grafics card - but I found no solution to problems such as mine. Maybe it's the ssd?

My specs:
Win7 64-bit
Asrock P67 Pro3 B3
Core i5 2500K @ default
Corsair Vengance 16GB 1600 CL9 (CML8GX3M2A1600C9)
MSI Radeon 6850 Cyclone ,1GB GDDR5 (256bit) @ DisplayPort
System @ SSD Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2
Couple of other HDDs, unrelated
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro (probably not it, but still..)
XFX Core 550W 120mm 80+ (P1-550S-XXB9)

Any help is much appreciated. If you have any further questions - please, ask! 😉

 

[Jconn]

This has started happening to me since I started playing OB Path of Exile. It is just a coincidence most likely but it is a good timetable. Same exact issue as you except it occurs when playing games, (PoE, CS:GO etc) temps stay normal the entire time. i7 860, nvidia 670 gtx, asus mobo etc.. entirely different setup than yourself.

 

[Drool2]

For me, it has nothing to do with games or any other stress-concerned tasks. It only happens with pop-ups, new tabs/windows, etc. My main bet is the graphics card (either hardware or drivers) - as new things are appearing on the screen (causing an infinite loop, memory leak, I don't know).

It could also be an SSD issue - as new things mean new packs of data have been saved/read thus causing a freeze - but this doesn't explan why every pixel is filled with the same data. Finally, sound card with its faulty drivers - yet this doesn't even make sense.

Are there any ways to determine the cause? Or should I just send the graphics card back (as its' still on warranty)?