No video signal after closing or alt+tabbing full-screen games, no wake from sleep mode

[derekdordan]

Hi all. For about a week now I've been dealing with this problem. Basically, whenever I close or alt+tab any game, or try to wake the PC from sleep mode, my display flashes on and off a couple of times like it's struggling to return to my desktop, then my monitors show the 'No signal' message and go into standby mode. My three monitors are running in Nvidia Surround with an LG TV above as a secondary display, and all of them are affected. It seems to happen any time a PC screen would normally go black for a second really, like when changing display settings. It even happens sometimes when starting games. Along with this I am experiencing fairly frequent CTDs while gaming, which results in the same black screen/no signal. When alt+tabbing is the cause, I can still hear game sounds through my headphones. The PC is still running and lit up, but I hear the fans go to minimum speed even though I have my GPU fans forced to 80% speed through MSI afterburner. I noticed that the lit words on my GPU also flickers at this time.
When this happens, there is nothing I can do short of restarting my PC that will cause the displays to come back on. I've tried ctrl+alt+delete, alt+F4, clicking, and spamming shift to get the sticky keys dialogue to wake it, nothing works. I've searched far and wide but no amount of Google-fu has found the right solution. I can't think of any download or changes I made to settings that brought this on. It seems pretty out of the blue and has been running without issue for months. I have not overclocked any of my components, everything is running at stock speeds. Also, I noticed some video corruption last night while watching Netflix on this machine. Not sure if it's at all related. It really comes off as a GPU issue to me but none of the suggested GPU-centered suggestions I've found haven't led anywhere, so I'm hoping for a fresh set of eyes since I'm about to pull my hair out.I'm hoping it's some kind of software issue and not a damaged component. Any help at all is appreciated, thanks in advance.

What I have tried:
1. Uninstall video drivers with DDU (Safe mode), clean reinstall of most recent video drivers (Version 388.71)
2. Update chipset drivers
3. Change BIOS settings: disable 'Internal PLL Overvoltage,' disable 'Option ROM Messages,' set 'AI Overclock Tuner' to X.M.P.
4. Ensure BIOS version is up to date
5. No pending Window's updates
6. Disable Windows Firewall
7. Disconnect secondary display
8. Unplug & reconnect displays when no signal is present
9. Ensure displays are set to 60hz (secondary display) & 144hz(main surround display) rather than Windows standard 59hz
10. Temperature monitoring. CPU stays below 45* and GPUs below 70*

System Specs
i5-4670k
Corsair H60i cooler
Asus Z97-A board
EVGA 980ti Superclocked & EVGA 980ti FTW edition running in SLI
Crucial ballistix sport 2x4gb DDR3-1600, Corsair Vengeance LP 2x4gb DDR3-1600
Samsung 850 EVO - 500gb SSD
WD Caviar black 3TB
EVGA 1050W Modular PSU
Windows 10 64-bit

 

[DRagor]

I would start out with testing different PSU. If no change with second PSU, then it has to be GPU related, either hardware malfunction or drivers problem. You did check the newest one, but you should also try previous version that you know worked fine.

 

[derekdordan]

I would start out with testing different PSU.

Is there a way to test my PSU without completely swapping it out? I don't have access to a second one so I'd have to do an RMA to even check this step

I will try rolling back GPU drivers and see if the problem lies there

 

[DRagor]

Is there a way to test my PSU without completely swapping it out?

Not really. If the problem would lie in system not starting up, you could at least use a multimeter to check if voltages are correct. But your system runs, so they are correct. The problem may lie in current drops and that can't really be measured without expensive hardware.
If you can't borrow a second PSU, another option is is to put your GPU in another machine and test it there - but you have to make sure the other computer has PSU beefy enough.