Twice I attempted simple renders, Octane rendered for just shy of 2 minutes and crashed the computer both times.

This is generally happening due to  hardware issue - 99% of cases due to the PC power supply being insufficient to adequately power your card(s).  What video card(s) are you running?  Which NVidia driver version do you have installed?  Have you overclocked your card(s)?

Paul 

Sorry, Paul.  Whatever it is, I'm not willing to risk my computer for a render engine I can't afford in the long term anyway.  I have the GT650 with 2Mb RAM on the card, 8Gb RAM in the machine and I overclock nothing. But, the bottom line is simple.  I won't re-install (yes, I've already removed it) because I won't risk the health of my computer with continued crashes.