Desktop remains on, display turns off, loud "skipping" sound follows

For the past 2-3 days, strange things have been going on with my desktop and its interaction with the monitor. While playing a game, my monitor went black as if my computer had been shut off. However, the computer remained on. Power was still active, every fan inside of the case was working, etc.

Originally, I thought it was just an incompatibility with this game, but then it happened again while watching YouTube. The screen goes black and there is an audible "skipping" sound, one you might expect to hear when a physical CD of music is dirty and stops mid-track.

At this time, I'm thinking it has to do with my video card. I didn't recently install any new drivers or anything. I play a game again, wait for this to happen, and ensure that my video card's fan is still working when this happens again. It is. I check the temperatures of my GPU, CPU, etc. All is well. I even clean out my case. Still, this continues to happen.

At this time, I'm thinking maybe it's the hard drive. I run health tests, etc. I run an error repair in Windows (as I'm running 8.1). Everything seems fine. I guess all that's left is the power supply? Could it be something to do with that? I am stumped and clueless at this point.

Other things I'll note:

• No new software or drivers were recently installed.
• I've run a long GPU stress test with FurMark, and it went smoothly. No issues.
• I've run a long CPU stress test. It went fine.
• I've inspected the case when this "shut off" occurs. Nothing visibly stops working.

It confuses me that I can get this problem to occur during a YouTube or gaming session, but during FurMark's most stressful benchmarking test, it works like a charm. Any ideas?

 

You did not mention the monitor. Monitors blacking out and remaining dark for longer periods of time indicate a problem with the monitor. It could be a bad resistor or capacitor.