“…it could heat to the point of freezing.”
now there’s an interesting oxymoron.
Seriously, if the render locks up at exactly the same place every time, then it almost has to be the media. If the lockup location is apparently random, but at about the same timeframe, then it could well be a heat related problem in the CPU.
Is your motherboard ovrclocked? Rendering is CPU intensive and an overclocked processor is not the best way to operate a rendering PC.
If you know your way inside the advanced BIOS settings, try underclocking – slow the processor clock down. If it renders without error, then you have a PC problem. Maybe the processor can’t handle the load of rendering.
Steve