Why is my monitor blinking?

I can't tell whether it's my monitor or my video card. I'm guessing it's the monitor, but I just want some opinions. My fan on my video card doesn't seem to work, but I've never had a problem with overheating. I have an arctic cooling contraption installed on it, so it's not the default. I don't game very often, maybe F1 2016 2-3 hours a month.

It's not constantly blinking, it just blinks randomly every so often. I don't want to say every 10 minutes, because it's not consistent, but I'd say every 10 to 20 minutes or so, but maybe not. It's just one flicker, then normal for whatever period of time.

Is the cable damaged?
Have you considered checking out the temps with something like hwmonitor?
https://www.cpuid.com/

Do you have more than one monitor?

Actually, although mine was blinking it happened for another reason I think. Mine would blink when I was playing a video and had a game up at the same time. I have two monitors and I think I had them at different refresh rates and that this was the root of my problems. As soon as I went in and made sure that all the refresh rates settings matched then my blinking went away.

Are you using HDMI?

I've used a number of different programs to check the temp. Gigabyte's program, hwmonitor, cpuid, and a few others. But never noticed anything out of range.

I actually do have more than one monitor. Maybe I should have mentioned that, but I only notice it on my viewsonic, not my samsung. I can't say my samsung never does it, because it's just my secondary for extra space, I'm not constantly using it.

I just tweaked a few of the settings in the geforce control panel. Set vert sync and triple buffering to on, and refresh rate to 59hz from 60hz on both my monitors. I don't know that it will make a difference, but it only took a second. The monitors did flip on and off, so it must have adjusted something.

Yes, I am using HDMI. As far as I can tell there's no damage to the cables and they're placed firmly.

replace the cable.

Does the monitor itself have any powersave functions that are causing the ping?

Mine does it sometimes when I change my AV receiver channel, I have one DVI>HDMI going to my HDTV, and the HDMI going to my AVR for audio.

or maybe the monitor indicating its gone to power saving mode