I would strongly advise against physically removing the fan from your cpu, and brushing away dust with a nylon brush, unless you're comfortable with this sort of stuff and know what you're doing.
 
Not that these aren't possible culprits for your issues (bad or badly fitted RAM is a prime one) but it's really easy to screw up if you just go in there without knowing what's what.

Just as an extra check, if you have ASIO4All on your system, uninstall it.

The Echo layla is a PCI based convertor not the new PCIe, which from what I have been told is old technology and going obsolete. The computer was built by a professional outfit that builds specifically for recording, this isn't some off the shelf Dell here. It's an i7 machine, with 16gigs of Ram and was thoroughly tested by the builder.
 
I always had good luck with the Echo, don't get me wrong they were real good to me. But they always locked up my computer, even when I was barely taxing it. I spent forever trying to find solutions, it finally came down to the Layla as being the problem.
 
RME has nothing but praise everywhere on the net as their stuff being rock solid. Just a little disappointed in it's initial install right now.

Fair enough, PCI is on its way out so I understand that rationale.  RME stuff is supposed to be top-shelf, so you can't go wrong there.  I suppose it's possible that some hardware glitch in the Layla's PCI card was causing a problem, but why a new PCIe card would be causing lockups is really odd.  Have you talked with the builder who built the machine?  I wonder if they would have any insights as to why this is happening.  It could be due to some setting in the BIOS, but that would depend on your motherboard and what BIOS it has, speaking of which, have you updated your mobo's BIOS with the latest patch?  Sometimes a BIOS update can cure strange problems like this.

leapinlizard
Fair enough, PCI is on its way out so I understand that rationale.  RME stuff is supposed to be top-shelf, so you can't go wrong there.  I suppose it's possible that some hardware glitch in the Layla's PCI card was causing a problem, but why a new PCIe card would be causing lockups is really odd.  Have you talked with the builder who built the machine?  I wonder if they would have any insights as to why this is happening.  It could be due to some setting in the BIOS, but that would depend on your motherboard and what BIOS it has, speaking of which, have you updated your mobo's BIOS with the latest patch?  Sometimes a BIOS update can cure strange problems like this.

I am no expert by any means, but they mentioned something about the pci bridge being an issue? Anyways, I really appreciate all the help. RME have given me a couple things to try, if all else fails I will contact the builder.
Thanks again!

There are some weird gear combinations that sometimes screw you over. I just spent four hours troubleshooting an old laptop I use for photos, where the latest version driver of Intel Turbo Memory apparently makes Windows Update not work. Had to google for ages to sift through the non-working "fixes".
Just saying, sometimes it's something entirely unexpected and seemingly unrelated.

I ended up having to pull the card and install it in another computer to get the firmware to update, it would freeze my studio computer. Once it updated, I pulled it and put it back into my studio computer and it's working mint!
 
Thanks for all the help everyone!
 
 

Booyah! Glad to hear it!