This last bit got my attention.
Starting a couple of days ago, the game would lock up my PC, usually when jumping into a new system. The screen would flash a little, then turn a solid (which might be different on each occurrence), while the sound stuttered and eventually the PC would lock up so hard that I can only get it back with a power reset.
At first I thought this was because of one of the many things I run in the background when I'm playing ED (EDMC, EDDiscovery, EDDI, Media Monkey). However, when I ran just ED, it continued to do it. Then I did an experiment where I started the game and left it idle at the main menu. It still happens.
I am not seeing this at any time other than while I play Elite, although lately I haven't been playing anything else remotely taxing on my system. I think I'll have to reinstall Witcher 3 and see if it can run.
Maybe my box is starting to show its age. I've been using the same machine since early 2014, including the video card (GTX 780). One thing I did notice was that the GPU Core temperature was up to 80 C the last time it failed. I've never paid much attention to it before, so don't know if that's higher than average for ED. The supposed max operating temp is 95 C.