Question Consistently inconsistent DWM display issues

[aurelionight]

Howdy.
So, this is one that's been leaving me stumped for a while, now, and at this rate I'm practically pulling my hair out because it is unbelievably frustrating. Seemingly out of nowhere, with a small selection of games, my computer will seemingly 'lock up', cutting the display output entirely but seemingly leaving the rest of the computer totally fine and operational.
I can still hear audio, I can still hear my inputs changing that audio, and I can even see that Discord continues tracking the active game on my profile if I check it on my phone.

The event viewer logs tell me that dwm.exe fails, and attempts to reboot in an endless loop until I restart, but the strangest part is that it only seems to happen in a small selection of games, and nothing else. So far, that list is:

• Elden Ring
• Grand Theft Auto V

And just for posterity's sake, a few months ago I had the same exact issue with Final Fantasy XIV, but after restarting I could usually boot it up again and it'd work perfectly fine, so I'm unsure whether or not this is the same issue manifesting in a different way, or a different one with the same general symptoms.

I've done just about everything I can think of, and everything I can find online for similar issues, and nothing seems to fix it. That includes...

• Complete reinstallation of my graphics drivers, with DDU to keep things as clean as possible.
• Reseating my GPU, memory, and PSU.
• Downgrading my GPU drivers to an earlier version, in case it's an issue introduced by a recent Windows update.
• Reinstalling Windows. Three times. Twice of which were complete reinstalls, retaining absolutely nothing.

Neither Furmark or Superposition benchmarks introduce any issues, even at extreme quality settings, and (so far) it only happens on those two games, leading me to doubt it's strictly a hardware issue, though I suppose anything is possible.
Specific log files can be provided to help if you let me know which ones I should construct. The obvious issue would be hardware, but... infrequency combined with a strong hope that it's something I can actually repair with no money leads me to think otherwise.


As for specific specs...

CPU: Ryzen 5 1600
GPU: GTX 1060 6GB
16 GB of memory
Windows 10 Pro

 

[Colif]

so in reliability history on the days you crashed, I assume it looks something like

4 years ago, how time flies

So if its anything like mine, its not the GPU. It could be a USB device or another peripheral.
USB and GPU are both controlled by same chips so if one is playing up, it can cause a conflict.
In my case it was my mouse.

So any old hardware that has always worked before? good place to start.

 

[aurelionight]

so in reliability history on the days you crashed, I assume it looks something like

\
4 years ago, how time flies

So if its anything like mine, its not the GPU. It could be a USB device or another peripheral.
USB and GPU are both controlled by same chips so if one is playing up, it can cause a conflict.

So any old hardware that has always worked before? good place to start.

No dice there, unfortunately. I tested Elden Ring with everything unplugged. Even my keyboard and mouse, using an old PS/2 keyboard to control it, and it still crashes the moment I load in. Seems to be doing it faster, too, which is concerning.

 

[aurelionight]

I'll post something else here just to help out anyone that may be suffering the same issue as me:

I'm still not entirely certain on if it's fixed or not, but I went ahead and set up MSI Afterburner to underclock my GPU to 72% power draw, then i left Elden Ring running for about half an hour while I went outside to do yardwork.

I'll report back on if I have any more issues past this point, but so far that seems to have done it.
It's probable my GPU is still dying and I've only delayed the inevitable, but it's something.