I know just what you're talking about.
Fortunately I seem to have settled in with a bunch of gear that works for me:
Macbook Pro (late) 2013 - reckon I'll be working on this thing for years to come. No strain at all, and is coupled with a couple of old CCFL 23" Dell monitors.
iPhone 6S - not perfect but very tolerable for day to day use
Panasonic 54" Plasma TV
My gaming PC has a 1.0 version Gigabyte 970 card and Dell 2407 monitor. Both great.
But man, I live in fear of any of these devices going 'pop'. Hence I bought a second 970 video card, have a spare 2407 and 2410 monitors. Still the problem remains. As an IT guy and an avid simmer/gamer this stuff is as you say rather depressing - doubly so that we just don't know what causes this exactly. Hell I cannot use my favourite flight sim because it's one of those 'bad apps' that give problems. I won't mention the new Chrome browser... still if Firefox seems bad still I might be forced to use Edge :-o
Don't give up.