PC Freezing

Anyone know if it's possible for a non-OS hard drive to cause a PC to lock up and become unresponsive?
Lately, my PC has been freezing when I turn off my monitor and it sits idle for a while, but now it seems to be doing it while in use. Only two things that have changed. One is that I've added a new 20tb storage drive. The drive didn't look like it was being accessed before it froze just now, but I'm just trying to rule that out. And the more likely culprit, my CPU cooler pump died causing my PC to shut down from overheating. That happened a few times before I realized the pump was bad. I swapped out the cooler for an air cooler and temps are good.