I reinstalled the 550 driver and added that line in nvidia.conf. I will restart and see how it goes. I suppose I could set up a temporary dual boot and test it in windows. This all started as soon as I first started trying to get linux working on this pc, though. Prior to that it had been running windows since I got it. The temperature readings all seem fine, too. That being said I think the next thing I try is to replace the thermal paste and if that doesn’t work I’ll dig up my windows installation media and see how that goes. Someone in a previous thread suggested my psu might be going out, which would make sense because its the only original part other than the cd drive at this point, so I think that might be my next try if nothing free works.
Edit: I got a black screen on the first restart, got to log in and then went to a black screen with a working cursor on the second and third restarts, then it seemed to be working fine, until mostly everything went black except some of spotify and keepass and white squares were flashing everywhere for about 30 seconds and then it stopped. Everything is working as normal now for the time being.
Edit 2: Just played Elden ring for a few minutes, the game crashed pretty quickly, but not immediately and nothing else crashed. Still planning to do the memtest at next full crash.
Edit3: had a hard freeze and ran the memtest when I had to restart. It passed.
I made a memtest drive and will run it as soon as I need to restart again, which might be soon because I’m starting to see more artifacting again.
Edit: Had a hard freeze and had to restart. The memtest passed with no errors.