9800X3D / 5070Ti / 64GB - Helldivers fully locking up PC

I have a close to 80% reproducible issue where launching Helldivers will cause the game to lock up while still on the ship, or during gameplay. These lcokups / freezes are for the full computer, and the only way to recover is a hard reset. No other game has this issue. I'm using the latest Nvidia drivers, and have even tried doing a full reinstall twice (including manually deleting leftover Arrowhead folders everywhere).

At my wits end on how to fix it and this close to rage uninstalling the game. Searching online shows multiple threads for this issue in the past few months but none seem to have an actual resolution. Any suggestions or advice?