Monitor intermittently turns itself off

[neema_t]

Unless you're a electronics expert, forget about it completely.

This is true. The caps that aren't dead can quite easily kill you (bolded because I'm really not joking), and the power supply is working fine which means there are a number of high voltage, high capacitance caps which are still alive. In fact even the caps that are leaking could still be very dangerous. So yeah, forget about it until you've tried everything else.

"Blown caps" is a trendy solution to many PC problems and if you had a multimeter and the knowledge to check all the caps then you might be able to identify and replace the faulty ones - or you could replace them all I suppose - BUT it's a fiddly and skilled job and not a DIY task by any means.

This is not strictly true; a multimeter can help but blown caps can be visually identified 99% of the time by their bulging tops or leaked electrolyte fluid, which is a thick, brown congealed mess. Replacing them is easy though, it takes maybe 20 seconds per cap. Silver solder is fucking crap (but necessary because of RoHS rules), fortunately all you have to do is heat up each 'leg' (lead) of the cap, add some fluxed lead solder on top of the silver, then alternate heating the legs while pulling and wiggling the cap away from the board. Then just drop the new cap in (making sure you have the polarity right) and use lead solder on it, snip the excess lead off and that's it... If they're SMD electrolytics (unlikely), it's harder but still doable with a normal iron, assuming you can see and reach the pads of course.

Even if you just have to buy a decent soldering kit and the spare parts you'll be out a chunk of money which I think would be better spent on a new screen (unless you hanker to learn electronics the hard way!?!?)

Any old soldering iron would do, caps aren't sensitive enough to short-term heat (heat is quite often what causes them to die, but only if it's sustained for a long period of time (like, years)) to worry about... You should see the shit we have to use at college! The caps, however, can vary from cheap shit that you'll have to replace again in two to three years or high quality stuff that should last five to six years, if not more. The cost of my repair was about £15 and even that is because the place I got my caps wouldn't let me buy just two caps, I had to buy five of one value and three of the other two for some reason. Then again my monitors were £220 when new so replacing them would've been a real shitter.

There are very, very few places who offer that sort of service either - because it's time consuming and a repair will often outweight the cost of a new monitor (when they start at £60 especially!)

Unless your monitor has some warranty left (have you checked??) I think it's time for a new one. If it's faulty with more than 1 input then you can be reasonably confident your PC isn't the issue at least.

No arguments here, getting a professional to do it would make it a pointless endeavour. I'd be very surprised if the caps were so cheap that they blew within the warranty period but I have been surprised before!

If it's blown caps, forget it. The capacitors have already leaked and ruined the entire circuit board. There's no way to salvage it if that's what's wrong with it.

I've never seen electrolytic fluid leak that much, it's very viscous to begin with and dries quickly in air. I've never seen a circuit board ruined by leaking electrolytic caps, I suppose it's possible but very unlikely, unless, I suppose, the electrolytics are bizarrely mounted parallel to the board instead of perpendicular as you see in pretty much every single board ever.


Basically, if you don't know what you're doing there is a possibility that you will kill yourself using the monitor's power supply caps. I'd recommend exhausting all other options before deciding to do it yourself, and if you do decide to do it yourself Google the shit out of safe capacitor discharging, leave the monitor unplugged for at least a week (caps don't hold their charge for too long when not powered), watch YouTube guides, update your will, tell your wife/girlfriend (maybe?)/husband/boyfriend you love her/him then try it. It is not a triviality and I'm really not joking. Sorry but that's just how electricity is.

If you're out of warranty you could also try finding a local college that teaches electronic engineering or a vocational electronics repair course, they might be willing to repair it for you for free or cheap if a student can learn something, you never know. Or you could ask a student if you could pay them to do it, who knows?

Oh and if you're wondering about my sources and experience, I'm only a BTEC student but I can promise you you'd hear the same advice about working with caps from pretty much anywhere.

[harhis23]

Had the same problem once, it was my Samsung monitor that started flickering. Since I was a loner and extensive gamer (not a techie guy) I made assumptions it was the monitor which has the problem. I immediately bought a new one and the problem disappeared. So, it could be the monitor. :)

[DeadPanda]

This happened to me once, the brightness would flicker, and the monitor would sporadically turn itself off. It turned out there was a bloody massive spider living behind the bezel whose little spider feet kept touching the internal sensors for the buttons.

So, if it's possible to remove it on your monitor, it might be best to check behind the bezel. I'm not even kidding, this really happened.

[Alex Bakke]

Unless you're a electronics expert, forget about it completely.

"Blown caps" is a trendy solution to many PC problems and if you had a multimeter and the knowledge to check all the caps then you might be able to identify and replace the faulty ones - or you could replace them all I suppose - BUT it's a fiddly and skilled job and not a DIY task by any means.

It's 'Trendy' because a lot of the time, it's the cause of the problem. At least, definitely with monitors. They're quite easy to identify, they'll be leaking/swelling at the top. It's not at all fiddly, either - all it will take is the rudimentary knowledge of how to solder/unsolder components. Maybe 10 minutes to learn and practice? That's how long it took me in GCSE Electronics, anyway.