Can crashes be caused by hardware?

Thanks FreeBooter. Crystal Disk Info said my HD was good and no red flags. I installed Speed Fan. No exclamation point in Device Manager. Since I got my fan spinning yesterday, when I pressed on my video card, it's been spinning constantly, so something was clearly wrong and now it spins constantly. I reseated my video card and cleaned the contacts and slot with contact spray. I updated my video card driver, it had a 2015 driver not the latest 2016 driver.

I ran Dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth - The restore operation completed successfully.

I ran Sfc /scannow - Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them.
I;ve run Sfc /scannow quite a few times over the days and always get this same message even when I did it in the safe mode. DISM doesn't fix this, neither did a updated video driver.

I ran Chkdsk C: /f with a reboot and there were no errors. I've had no crashes for 4 days. I still have the computer with the case open on it's side. Since the fan was stopped a few days ago, maybe that's been the culprit when the computer case was upright and closed and crashed.

Yesterday I also put in my old boot drive that had a Macrium image from 11/15/23 (imaged after I ran the SFC and DISM). This boot drive worked fine and booted to Desktop. So it's still looking like more of a hardware or bad connection issue than a HD issue to me..

Thanks FreeBooter for the crash minidump analysis. The BlueScreenViewer listed as ntoskrnl.exe the driver that caused of 3 BSOD in Sept and 2 recently in the last few days. It appears that driver is related to my video driver and my Samsung monitor driver. I updated my video driver yesterday and just updated my monitor driver. Do you think that's all I need to do?

GerryPeters said:

Can crashes be caused by hardware?

YES.
Loose memory. Loose cables (like HDD, power, data, etc). You might be surprised what the history of SATA 1 to 3 includes about cables and keeping them connected.

Fans not working properly will eventually lead not just to overheating and crashes, but also to deterioration of the thermal paste, or damage to neighbor components.

The state of the connectors (pins) also matters, Apple has a dark history with this regarding RAM and also display.

Power cables? oh yes. Loose cables depending the model can let EMI get into your system as if they were antennas, same goes to ups and downs in current or voltage, even to produce audible electric noise.

CAPS... many of these factors (along with aging) can make your capacitors stop working properly or leak.

No crashes in 8 days. It appears that it was hardware problems. With my back fan stopping and then starting when I pressed on my video and then with me reseating and cleaning the contacts on my video card and also finding my power cord was no pressed all the way in. This all points more to hardware.

When things were messed up I tried 2 different HD's and neither would boot. It all got better when I fixed the hardware issues. So I think I'm ok for now and yes eventually I'll replace this computer, but only when it truly dies. I use it primarily for email and browsing. It bugs me that SFC /scannow that it can't fix the corruption. Maybe it's ok, not sure