Display randomly goes blank on desktop but not on games?

[F60Outrunn]

This is my first ever post on here so be nice

In a nutshell my pc has had a chequered life (my very first gaming pc), I had a Crucial m4 SSD that died, then revived itself after a couple of weeks out of nowhere 3 times before I replaced it for a Samsung 850 Evo recently, Case fans dying on my £15 pc case (now have a Corsair 400C, much better) and the most recent being my old GPU (Radeon HD7870) died - random blocks on the screen, booting to windows failed all the time.

Now I have a AMD/XFX RX 480 GPU, and it games in 4k (UHD really) flawlessly, really happy with it. the thing that I cant understand though is on the DESKTOP, sometimes only edge/firefox open, sometimes them with Outlook or Corsair Link, or sometimes NOTHING WHATSOEVER, the screen will just cut out. if I have audio being transmitted, e.g. via Spotify or youtube they still go through fine, but if I turn the tv off/on, still nothing. if I unplug the HDMI cable, nothing. however if I turn the PC off/on again it works fine.

 

Again I state this NEVER HAPPENS DURING GAMING, which is why I am so confused.

I am wondering if it is the motherboard itself/ due to SSD's & GPU's failing in it (when the SSD died I wasn't kind to it I wont lie) maybe it is starting to show its age, its a ASUS M5A97 PRO with a AMD Phenom II x4 965 3.4GHZ (stock speed), which during gaming holds itself surprisingly well considering the CPU is 7 years old now. But the Reason I think it could be the motherboard is when I went into the desktop Mobo software (AI Suite) and went on BIOS update, the screen went blank at the exact point 2 times in a row when I attempted to go through the various stages of update. 

On this boot I have closed the Mobo software as soon as it loaded on startup, and (touches wooden desk) everything seems ok.

Any help would be useful as this a rather erratic problem, on sunday I had the display on all day and never occurred, where as today it happened twice, and Saturday once, Friday once, Thursday nothing. I am truly at a loss to explain this issue.

 

[LabRat]

what power supply do you have and how old is it?

 

did you enter the monitors control panel and set it back to factory specs?

 

 

[F60Outrunn]

its a Corsair HX750i, less than a month old got it the same time as the Samsung SSD and the case, as far as the monitor - tv goes it is on factory specs, only thing I changed on it was turned the brightness down from its factory settings since it was almost blinding me playing star wars battlefront!

[F60Outrunn]

on Corsair Link on desktop it averages around 160/170watts, 90% efficiency if that helps at all

[LabRat]

tv, different realm for me. do you have it selected to pc or just have the hdmi slot enabled for the the hdmi cable.

did you try a different cable?

or swap the cable around so the ends are swapped for tv and pc?

did you try s different hdmi slot on the card?

does the motherboard have on board graphics? if so, bypass the card and hook to that for testing purposes.