nvlddmkm error on 2070s

[Jeff C]

Hi all, I recently started getting a weird bug as of yesterday (5/25/2020) afternoon with my GPU.

 

Here are my system specs:
i7-9700k

MSI MPG Pro Carbon

Gigabyte RTX 2070 Super Windforce OC

32 Gig of Gskill Trident-Z RGB, 3200MGhz RAM

Seasonic 850w PSU (80+Gold)

2 512G NVME drives

2 SATA SSD Drives (1 1TB, 1 512G)
GPU and CPU watercooled with EKWB Blocks

2 monitor:  1 Asus 1440p 75Hz TN 27" (used as secondary) and an ACER 1440p 144HZ, 27" Curved Freesync monitor as my primary/gaming display

3 Cable extensions from the PSU to CPU 8pin, the 24 pin, and the GPU
 Current temps under load are in the mid 60s on both CPU and GPU (its 90+ in the house and I havent put in the AC yet)

Nothing is currently over clocked with the exception of the RAM xmp profile enabled.

GPU use to have a 2 overclock settings (the OC curve setting with a +500 MGHZ on the mem, and a manual +40 on the Core and 500 on the mem, currently set to base for troubleshooting)
 

Heres the issue:  This past Thursday I purchased Disco Elysium on GoG and started playing it friday night for 30 minutes, and everything was fine, I bounced between that, Witcher 3, Wow, and Vampire Bloodlines (yeah its old but i finally decided to get around to it) and the system was running perfectly.  Monday morning I put in about 2 hours of Disco E before closing out and putting system to sleep so I could do some adulting, again no issues.  I come back home that afternoon, load up Disco E and my displays go black as if the monitors went into sleep mode as soon as i selected load save game, and then i got a no display signal found, although I could still hear game sounds coming from my headset (SS artic7).  I hard rebooted the PC and checked the event viewer and saw the following error:

 

Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered (except it didnt see to recover because my display never came back on either monitor)
My initial troubleshooting was to limit to 1 display, swap monitors and if possible use onboard graphics, followed up by re-installing my nvidia drivers (v445) as a clean install. Issue still occurred, although with some delay.  i was able to load the game and see my character for a few minutes before it went to poop. At this point I decide to load OCCT and run a graphics stress test, enabling error checking mode and set it to run for 30 minutes. I run down stairs for a few minutes to check dinner and boom, happens again. So I switch to onboard graphics, and load up WoW..because its the first game i can think of that can let me toggle my primary graphics provider.  I then get a blue-screen with an error about direct-x..and Im like Ah Ha, and I recall that the rivatuner software that comes with afterburner can sometimes not play nice with DX, so I remove it..and it happens again. Okay, maybe something was lingering.  I decided to kill the OS and re-install windows (all my important data and installs are stored on secondary drivers so im not losing a lot by doing this).  I re-install windows Run OCCT error checking mode for about an hour..0 issues (okay cool cool), I load WoW, probably play for 30-45 minutes, no issue, even better, I load Disco E, the save file that this all started with, and nothing..so I decide to wait..I leave the game running but i dont do anything with the characters, i just let it sit for about an hour and im alt tabbed browsing the web, reconfiguring discord, researching the error and possible issues. Everything looks good.  cool. So i close the game thinking its fixed, and within 5 minutes it happens again. Now at this point Im still running driver 430 that was grabbed by MS and not the latest one from nvidia. 

I'm currently at a loss here, I have read many different troubleshooting steps on this issue with answers ranging from Bad GPU to bad Driver, Bad MB, and even Dying PSU. 
I did recently pick up a new 2080s from newegg in the event the card itself is dying (my dudes there is currently a GPU shortage).  If I can resolved it via firmware/software I'll just return the 2080s which is my preferred option.
Im just concerned that I would have to eventually rebuild my whole system for what seems to be a driver/firmware issue.

Has anyone else had experience with this issue and or can offer some troubleshooting advice that I have not covered here.
I know I wrote a book, but i want to provide as much detail as I can.
Additionally I do have a kill-o-wat reader if for some reason that info is needed, as well as gpu-z, hwmonitor, and all sorts of benchmarking utilities that I can SS and provide if requested.

Thank you ladies and gents.