Yes, I too had a GPU hardware issue…probably a “baked” component or two, from overheating, on an older GPU. It was subtle and took a while for me to figure out.
The issue: When running a GPU-heavy application like a 3D video game, it would crash (via screen freezing) after a while, for which I originally thought it was related to software. In the end (months of troubleshooting) I determined it was the GPU. Its way of dealing with overheating was to cause the screen to freeze / turn black.
So, I bought a new GPU, slightly better than the older one, and presto, the problem went away.