Question Black Screen During Gaming Only - Bad Motherboard?

[markspinner]

A little less than a year ago, I built a new PC with the following specs:

Mobo: MSI PRO Z690-A

CPU: Intel i5-12600K

GPU: 1080

Power : CORSAIR RM850

Ram: TCORSAIR Vengeance 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 5200 (PC5 41600)

After about 6 months on the 1080, the monitor would randomly report no display during gaming sessions and I'd have to restart the machine. Tested the 1080 in wife's machine and seemed to exhibit same behavior so I figured it was video card issue.

Some other behavior I'm seeing is the GPU sometimes has a red light when the machine is first powered on. After I reseat the power cables it's fine. Other times it just doesn't show up in Device Manager at all (I have a onboard video card that allows me to do this troubleshooting).

I was able to get my hands on a 3070 for a reasonable price and it worked great. For about a month. Then started seeing the same behavior that was seen with 1080. OK so maybe it's not video card after all...

From there I've been troubleshooting trying to figure out what it could be. First thought was PSU maybe not getting enough power so I bought a new PSU - same issue. Some others things I've done include:

1. Update motherboard BIOS
2. DDU GPU driver cleanup
3. sfc scan (no errors)
4. MemTest (no errors)
5. Testing individual sticks of memory

Currently I'm in the process of RMAing my motherboard because I'm coming to my wit's end. Could a bad motherboard cause these issues?

 

[lvt]

Maybe you could spend sometimes testing the motherboard using the onboard video.

If the motherboard has gone bad, it should show the same symptoms from time to time.

 

[markspinner]

I have tested that and it seemed to work fine. I suspect the issue may be the PCIE slot but don't know for sure.