15 inch 2011 Macbook Pro crashing under mild stress

Question

     I've been encountering numerous hardware problems with my 15inch 2011 Macbook Pro for the last year.  Problems such as the laptop overheating before going into sleep mode when I close the lid (which caused my hard drive to corrupt).  My laptop has also become extremely sensitive to being bumped.  A slight bump while the machine is in use and it'll give me a ram failure 3 beep code.  I've used 3 different sets of ram and it still suffers.  And now within the last 2 months my computer seems unable to handle any mild processing.  The system will start to slow down significantly when I open more then one tab in my web browser at a time.  The system also runs extremely hot under these circumstances with the fans running at high speeds and ultimately leading to a system crash where the screen freezes and all I hear is erratic static noise from the speakers until I force shutdown.  I can't even watch 1080p videos on youtube without risking a crash!  I am aware of the GPU failure that is currently affecting thousands of 2011 macs that are the same model as mine.  I am trying to diagnose if my computer is also encountering GPU failure.  The symptoms of my computer are not the same as what others are reporting in the GPU case, but I have no idea what else could be causing it.  Any help would be great!
Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

If your MBP is experiencing kernel panics, use these instructions and post one:
http://support.apple.com/en-us/ht2546
Without actual temperature readings, one cannot determine if you have an issue with heat.  Download iStat menus:
http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
Open Activity Monitor to ALL PROCESSES and set %CPU to display values from high to low.  When your MBP gets hot, post images of both for review.
Ciao.