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A Festivus Miracle
Dec 19, 2012

I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

Problem description: So, I've got this old 1600*900 monitor that's probably on the outs. Recently, it's DVI port died, so I got a VGA cable and started using it as the second monitor in a dual monitor setup. The VGA output has some weird de-sync issue which I think are graphics card related. The problem I've recently noticed is that there's a noticeable flashing line of pixel that crawls up the 1600*900 monitor. I don't think it's a graphics card problem because the primary monitor doesn't appear to have any pixel fuckups or obvious graphical artifacting.

Attempted fixes: Reseating the cable doesn't appear to affect it.

Recent changes: Started using the hosed up monitor (the one with this issue) as a secondary monitor.

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Operating system: Windows 7

System specs: Relevant info: 1x NVIDIA GTX 680, 1x Acer G6 Series G226HQLBbd Black 21.5" 1920*1080 monitor, 1x Samsung SyncMaster E2020, 20.5" 1600*900 monitor, 1x DVI-DVI O/I output cord, 1x DVI-VGA O/I output cord, 1x 600 watt PSU that I ordered loooong ago.

Location: USA

I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes - this is either a graphics card issue or a monitor issue, and because of the age and the recent death of the DVI port, I'm inclined to believe the latter.

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Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
I concur that it sounds like your monitor is dying. Given the age and how cheap awesome monitors are these days, I would just junk it and pick up a nice 1080p IPS LED monitor. If you really want to try to fix it, you may be able to open it, easily identify some failing capacitors, and replace them. Here's a guy doing something similar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytw57212X2o

Avulsion
Feb 12, 2006
I never knew what hit me
If you know how to solder and you've got some free time, it'll be cheaper to fix it than to replace it. Pry it open and get a look at the capacitors, you can find replacement capacitor kits for 15 bucks on amazon, or probably buy them separately for less.

IronDoge
Nov 6, 2008

Like the other folks said, try replacing the capacitors. I had a couples issues with one of my older monitors I've been using since 2008. It would just randomly turn off or have colored lines running through it sometimes. It also made a high-pitched whine. Turns out the capacitors in the power supply were shot. You could clearly see the bulging on the end tops of all of them. Bought myself a soldering kit and all the required capacitors and had it repaired myself for really cheap. It's been a couple years since that fix and it's still going

If you've done soldering before, there's no reason not to try it. Otherwise consider whether or not you feel like investing the time to learn how to solder and figuring out how to pull apart the monitor without damaging it.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Avulsion posted:

If you know how to solder and you've got some free time, it'll be cheaper to fix it than to replace it. Pry it open and get a look at the capacitors, you can find replacement capacitor kits for 15 bucks on amazon, or probably buy them separately for less.
Keep in mind that a new monitor is $100 for a higher-resolution display with much better picture quality and energy efficiency, which makes putting in the money and time to repair an older display a very poor value for most people.

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