Display Cuts to Black w/ Sound, Requiring Restart

Relevant information:
GPU - EVGA manufactured GTX 970 (SC, ACX 2.0)
OS: Windows 10 Home, Version 1903, Build 18362.418

My display has been cutting to black without warning when playing certain games, and more specifically, when doing very specific things in these games. Immediately after the display goes black, I hear a notification from Windows and the audio from my game. The game still appears to be responsive to input, indicated by the sound played from associated actions (walking, shooting, et cetera).

For example, in an FPS, there is a very small and specific area on a certain map which guarantees my display to cut to black. Now, more recently while playing a different game, an MMO, my display cuts to black shortly after roaming on a specific planet. The two instances don't appear to be causally linked beyond that they're arbitrarily restricted to specific, and repeatable instances.

Now, I have taken a measure in the past to address the problem with no success. I have used Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) to perform a clean reinstall of my graphics driver. With no success from that, I only have questions on interpreting this issue.

Could my GPU be dying? (doubt)
Should I reinstall Windows?
Should I reinstall the afflicted games?
Is this an issue with software or hardware?
What steps should I be taking?
Et cetera.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

What psu do u have?

@boombastik

My PSU is a Bronze Certified Corsair CX Series, 750W; bought and installed in 2015.

I'm not confident this is a issue with insufficent power distribution, although I could be wrong given my ignorance. I believe I would be seeing failures across different componets, and that the black screens would not be consistently repeatable under specific circumstance. I can provide more information of what components I have to discern if 750W is insufficent.

@Pejole2165

I cannot recall if I checked event viewer the months back, but if I did it likely pointed to an NVIDIA driver; explains why I used DDU to perform a clean reinstall.

Unfortunately, I haven't access to my PC at the moment to check event viewer, so I'll update you around 5:30 P.M (my) local time.

Oh, I feel that this might be something important to mention. After another 'blackout', I restarted the PC and left my room to get a drink. Upon returning I found a black display with a few blue dots placed horizontally on my screen. The issue did not resolve itself, so I restarted again which fixed the problem. Relevant picture here: Imgur: The magic of the Internet

(P.S, I utilised DDU yesterday to perform a reinstall, and this time I forwent the installation of GForce Experience, PhysX, and the HD audio driver. No success, same problem.)

@Pejole2165

Took a look at event viewer, and it's pointing the finger at dwm.exe;

Code:

Faulting application name: dwm.exe, version: 10.0.18362.387, time stamp: 0x8e064b77
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0xe0464645
Fault offset: 0x0000000000000000
Faulting process id: 0x1e88
Faulting application start time: 0x01d5808f948500ff
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\System32\dwm.exe
Faulting module path: unknown
Report Id: 06cd6868-944a-4e04-aa55-7f0dd06fa0d3
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID:

At the same time, the event viewer reports this:

Code:

The Desktop Window Manager process has exited. (Process exit code: 0x000000ff, Restart count: 1, Primary display device ID: )

Couldn't tell you what could cause DWM to exit, or what those error codes mean, though I doubt it's a fault with the program itself. I suspect it was just the result of another problem, though I could be wrong.

I haven't access to a testbed PC, so removing it and putting it on another working PC isn't exactly an option worth exploring. Though, I'll go ahead and run benchmarks to see if we can narrow down the problem.

@bro67;

No. I haven't touched the clock speed, voltages, et cetera of my card beyond what they did at the factory.

As for the programs, so far it's been just two over the months. Escape from Tarkov and Destiny 2. For Tarkov, it seems to be triggered by getting close to and looking at a specific pile of burning trash in a shopping mall. For Destiny 2, it's like I said, just roaming around a specific planet.

@Pejole2165

Results of the benchmark on 1080p HIGH, and no blackouts;


HWiNFO64 graphs during the benchmark;

(I apologise that the graphs aren't particularly useful, but they should give a rough idea of what's going on, hopefully.)

@Pejole2164;

Results of the 1080p 'EXTREME', no blackouts;

(Interesting that the max temp was lower.)

As for the problems, since they've been avoidable (more or less), I've been ignoring them until now; though event viewer shows the first fault on the 18th of June, this year. So quite a bit back. So it's hard to say if it was as the result of a Windows update or display driver update.

Though, I can tell you that this run of Windows 10 was installed on the 11th of June, this year. So that's a bit interesting. When I was playing Escape from Tarkov on Win 7 without error, and I believe the first few days I was playing with Win 10 was without error as well.

So I could perhaps revert to a graphics driver before that date.

(P.S, I believe I had this issue on Win 7 as well, but it seems this problem resolved itself with time, and wasn't specific to Tarkov or Destiny 2 at the time.)