You'd be surprised what affects performance. Old drivers or software file corruptions can affect gameplay, for example. I've had old audio drivers prevent a new game from even starting up (though this was a long time ago).
If a fan isn't working or you don't have enough in your case, overheating components can cause computers to shut down in the worst situations; otherwise they can cause stuttery/choppy performance. I'm not saying its your particular problem (since yours seems random to how the computer starts up), but certainly doesn't hurt to check (also check fans on video card/CPU and case fans).
There's a somewhat easy way to check if RAM is misfiring. The program MemTest will test RAM. I've used it before, though the one time I did have a RAM problem was from a particular error that others had which turned out to be the RAM itself.
I'm not sure what else to check. If nothing else, these are things that we all should keep an eye on to keep our systems running smoothly.
I guess I'll probably have to take a more in depth look at what is running during different instances and boot ups. I did actually run a memtest on my RAM a couple months ago that came up clean. My fans seem to be running fine and I haven't noticed any overheating from playing this game thus far. Not as likely either of those are the issue.
