Monitors keep dying

[kakule]

Hey all,
I have a home built system that has been stable with no problems for the last year or so. I tried to upgrade my (very) old 17” lcd monitor to a dell 22” E228WFP. Within a few days the display began to wobble/shimmer and the screen blacked out briefly, and returned and did this a few times, before finally dying and the monitor no longer recognised the vga data cable input.

I got the monitor replaced after troubleshooting with dell (trying different machines and cables). 4 months later the same thing happened with the replacement. So again I got it changed, thinking I may have been extremely unlucky. 3rd replacement failed the same day it was delivered. Dell were very good and offered a refund, despite the fact it was quite clear it wasn’t the monitor. So I have since bought a Samsung 22” (SM223BW) which I received today and it has begun doing the wobbly display thing, so I have disconnected it before it dies. Anybody have any ideas what is causing this?

My 17” lcd has been fine for 3-4 years, and still works fine with the machine with no hint of a problem. CPU/ graphics temps are low so they don’t seem to be a problem and like I have said, the system if completely stable with the other monitor. Many thanks for any insight, spec below:

Mobo: ASUS P5B-E Plus S775
CPU: C2D E6300 w/ Scythe Ninja heatsink
PSU: Antec Neo HE 500w
Graphics: Xfx 7600gt 256mb
HDD: Western Digital 250gb
RAM: Cossair DDR2 PC-5400 2X1GB

Everything running at stock, (though graphics card is factory-overclocked)

Sorry for long post!

 

[akhilles]

Could be interference. Does it happen when someone else is using electricity?

Personally I wouldn't trust the raw power coming out the wall sockets. I use an 860W UPS which cleans up the "dirt" in the power source. And yes, dirty power can damage sensitive parts like hard disks and memory. Ages ago I used to just plug the crap pc in the wall outlet and a number of times my pc crashed and even lost some data on the hard disks. Ever since I got the 1st quality surge suppressor, it has been a safe ride.

 

[miamirain]

Definitely make sure you don't have a "dirty" power supply from the wall, plug the monitor into a surge protector or UPS if you haven't done so. Check what's near the monitor for interference, a friend of mine had some weird stuff happening to his monitor a while back, eventually we found out the cause is his monitor sits next to a wall and behind it is the garage where the 220V power socket was at and that gave a lot of interference.

 

[kakule]

Thanks for the replies,

I plugs are into a power strip with surge protection. Surely if that were the problem, the 17" would be showing problems too though?

 

[bildo123]

I would blame dirty power as well...Also do you have a different cable that goes from the video card to the monitor? Could be the old one thats shorting inside, maybe crimped or something rare but totally possible.

 

[akhilles]

Well, in his OP, he said he did troubleshooting with different cables with Dell. That ruled out cables.

A surge suppressor can help a bit, but if it's cheap, it may not provide as good protection as the more expensive ones. The best solution would be an on-line UPS like mine that uses both battery & AC power at the same time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surge_suppressor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_Power_Supply

It does sound strange that the monitors are the only affected, but not the pc or anything else. Could you try another room? Or another wall socket. Don't overload the power outlet. Unplug the unused power adapters for your gadgets.

 

[kakule]

Hey thanks for all replies,

With regard to power supply, I think it is OK tbh, there are 3 other systems that run off the mains in the house and have never had any other problems. Also I am a uni student, and 2 of the 3 monitors failed whilst living there (with 10 other people running computers in the house with no problems, so I think it has to be something specific to my system)

I have managed to swap out the graphics card and my rig (with the alternative graphics card) has been running stable for about an hour now. Whereas my display would start to wobble after a few minutes with my other card.

If:
- the system has killed 3 22" monitors (and is on the verge of killing this one), but happily deals with an old 17".
- 2 other systems runs the 22" monitor fine.
- my system runs the 22" fine when the graphics card is changed.

Is it reasonable to conclude the graphics card looks to be the issue?

 

[boonality]

It's either the video card or the resolution your using. but i would think that the newer lcd's would not let you select a resolution that is outside of it's range so most likely it's the video card at those resolutions causing the problem

 

[akhilles]

Could be the gpu, but I have never seen a LCD wobble, only CRT with incorrect drivers/settings (out of range/sync).