Black Screen Upon Input When Starting New Programs

RLTree · January 21, 2021

So, I have been having an issue lately where my screen starts to go black for a couple seconds upon starting a new program (I thought it was just games, but it recently happened with Zoom as well). The screen comes back if I don't press any buttons or move my mouse, but as soon as I create an input for the computer, the screen goes black for a couple more seconds before coming back. If I close the program, the screen stops going black, but will start again if I try to open a program. It normally only happens when my computer has been running, or in sleep, for a couple hours. If I restart the computer, it usually solves the issue, and I can run the program/play my game as long as I want (I have gone for 8+ hours after restarting the computer). This fix works for now, but I wanted to know if there is something in my computer, or related to Windows 10 OS, that could be causing this issue, and hopefully that I can address before it becomes a bigger problem. Thank you in advance for any advice y'all can offer me! Specs for my computer are below:

OS - Windows 10 (Home) [This is the original OS obtained from Microsoft website and installed via USB by me]
x64 - bit
Age of system - almost 7 months old
Age of OS installation - Only installed once, so about 7 months as well
CPU model - Ryzen 5 3600 (4.2 GHz)
Video Card model - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060Ti (~ 1 month old) [Upgraded from Radeon 5700 XT due to driver and hardware issues]
Motherboard - MSI MPG X570 GAMING EDGE WIFI
BIOS - (MSI) Version 1.80 [4/20/2020]
Power Supply - Thermaltake 850W (80+ Gold)
RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX (16 GB 3200 MHz)
Storage - 6.5 TB (500 GB M.2 & 6 TB 7200RPM)
Desktop
Mostly used for Gaming, but also used for school

p.s. - If y'all could recommend some resources for learning more about system hardware/computers in general independently, I would greatly appreciate it! I am a senior at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor studying Biology, so they have a great CS program, but it is a little too late for me to take any of these classes as "for fun" classes unfortunately.