weird problem when playing games / Flickering screen

Hi guys,

I bought some new hardware (to be precise, a whole computer but I kept the monitor) and installed a new os. My hardware is a Gigabyte Z790-board, an intel 12700K-cpu, 3080ti graphics card, 32 Gig Ram 4000 Mhz running on 3600 Mhz since the cpu doesnt support faster memory, a 2 gig WD M2-SSD and a 750watt be quiet power supply. I kept my acer predator monitor, which supports Gsync.

I then installed Win11 as new os. I installed all drivers using the supplied gigabyte-tool and installed the nvidia graphics card driver and let Windows update itself. One of the first games I installed was Diablo 4. After playing some minutes I noticed a weird flickering, especially when clicking with the mouse. Every time it flickers, I noticed another game icon in the task bar disappearing the next moment. Furthermore Windows looses focus on the game and is presenting explorer or browser windows. When a big mob appears in D4 even sound dropouts could be noticed. Some days later I was fed up with this and deleted win 11 and installed a fresh copy of Win 10. I was then surprised because I now have the same symptoms on Win 10.

I disabled Gsync and so on, checked all drivers, made a bios update, checked process explorer/event viewer and was searching the net for a solution but I could find anything that helped. I am thinking about reinstalling Windows 10 again, maybe using an older image. But can anyone help me or give me a hint for my problem?

This problem seems only to occur in game windows, everything else works fine.

Did you build this new computer or buy it pre built?

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If you have all the drivers and device manager is not showing any triangles then its probably a physical problem.

If you bought the computer pre built unplug everything and then reseat it, a component or cable could of come lose or might not be fully plugged. Make sure the motherboard is not grounding on the case it will cause problems like this.

if any of the solder joints or the metal plate at the back of the CPU touches the case or riser it will cause grounding issue and can cause instability problems for the computer. Check your chipset driver because it will also present problems like this if its not installed.

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If explorer windows are opening by itself like it sounds you are saying and the computer feels really random like its controlling itself in way then its either instability or malware. Either way you need to rule out both although malware is unlikely because the issue presents over multiple windows installs.

I assembled all parts myself, did this for years - had no problems till now.

Yesterday I also tried using a hdmi connection instead DP, same problems. All drivers, also the chipset driver, are updated. I also tried gaming without my av-tool (Kaspersky), but the problems are still there. Tried a nvidia-cleanup-tool, too.

I also did rum PCmark and 3dmark, giving me the expected results and no errors exept the ones mentioned before (flickering).

The explorer windows are not opening itself but are coming up from the background. It's like I started the computer, opened an explorer window, then was browsing using firefox and next playing some game. While gaming the windows from the background come up and are in the foreground. I think that is known as "windows are stealing focus"-error. I tried some solutions from the net, but still no use. I think I'll try a fresh install at the weekend and try to install some linux with wine and/or steam-app to check if this is a Windows-problem.

I did switch back to the old graphics card, same error/problems. I run memtest now