I'd be happy to report further if there's anything that I can look up as to why the link might have been missing.
I don't know if it will be of general/debugging interest, however, because my workstation's yum is not the most healthy state: I've followed some bad advice from dodgy internet "how tos" in the past, e.g. installing a kernel beyond the level supported by CentOS, which I've backtracked from. Each kernel change requires reinstalling Nvidia drivers.
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks, versionlock
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
--> Running transaction check
---> Package xorg-x11-drv-nvidia.x86_64 1:352.99-1.el7 will be updated
---> Package xorg-x11-drv-nvidia.x86_64 1:396.44-1.el7 will be an update
--> Processing Dependency: nvidia-kmod >= 1:396.44 for package: 1:xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-396.44-1.el7.x86_64
---> Package xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-devel.x86_64 1:352.99-1.el7 will be updated
---> Package xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-devel.x86_64 1:396.44-1.el7 will be an update
---> Package xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-gl.x86_64 1:352.99-1.el7 will be updated
---> Package xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-gl.x86_64 1:396.44-1.el7 will be an update
---> Package xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.x86_64 1:352.99-1.el7 will be updated
---> Package xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.x86_64 1:396.44-1.el7 will be an update
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Package: 1:xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-396.44-1.el7.x86_64 (cuda)
Requires: nvidia-kmod >= 1:396.44
Installed: 1:nvidia-kmod-352.99-2.el7.x86_64 (@cuda)
nvidia-kmod = 1:352.99-2.el7
Available: kmod-nvidia-390.67-1.el7_5.elrepo.x86_64 (elrepo)
nvidia-kmod = 390.67-1.el7_5.elrepo
Available: kmod-nvidia-390.77-1.el7_5.elrepo.x86_64 (elrepo)
nvidia-kmod = 390.77-1.el7_5.elrepo
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest
Thanks again, best, A.