Question Monitor blanks out at random times

[SMOGZINN]

Every so often my monitor just goes black, for maybe 10 seconds, then goes back to normal. This is a fairly new monitor (bought it Black Friday) it never happens when hooked up to my work laptop, so I am guessing it is a problem with my computer. This happens at random, when playing games, when browsing the web, sometimes just sitting at the desktop doing nothing.

Most of the parts of this build are less than a year old. The video card is the exception, because the market is so bad for GPU's this last year I kept my 1070ti. I've done a little bit of troubleshooting, used DDU to clean the drivers and install new from scratch, but not seen any improvements.

So, what do you think? Is this a sign my old GPU is dying?

Computer:
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
ASUS B550-F ROG Strix Gaming
G.SKILL 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3200
Crucial P2 2TB M.2 NVMe
GTX 1070ti

 

[mikeymikec]

Going on and off is a pretty typical symptom of a dying monitor. As the problem progresses, switching the monitor on and off via the monitor's power button will steadily do the trick less often. Pulling the mains power from the monitor and plugging it back in will steadily do the trick less often too, until it goes bye-bye altogether.

I'm not saying your situation *is* a dying monitor btw.

Is the backlight going off? Does the monitor say 'no signal' then returns to normal? Does its power light go off?

I had an odd situation with an old monitor once whereby it would flicker on/off randomly, and switching from DVI to VGA fixed it. IIRC the cable was not at fault.

 

[DeathReborn]

It could be the GPU, I had a R9 290 that with a 4K display would randomly go black, sometimes pop up a DP No Signal then pop back to life. It was fine with 1080 & 1440 but 4K it just choked. As soon as I swapped the GPU out for a RX 5700 the issue went away, same monitor, same cable, same drivers. It didn't come back with a 3080 10GB either.

See if you can borrow a newer GPU from a friend and see if that stops it.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Thanks everyone for the ideas! I can always count on AnandTech Forums!

Going on and off is a pretty typical symptom of a dying monitor.

I hope not. I just bought this monitor new a little over a month ago.

Is the backlight going off?

Don't know. I'll watch carefully next time to find out.

Does the monitor say 'no signal' then returns to normal? Does its power light go off?

Neither of these happen, and as I said I use this same monitor attached to my work laptop and I can't remember it ever happening when I was working. I'm fairly sure it has to do with my computer. I was just hoping for some ideas other then the video card that could be wrong. I really don't want to buy a video card right now.

It could be the GPU, I had a R9 290 that with a 4K display would randomly go black, sometimes pop up a DP No Signal then pop back to life.

This is a 1080p monitor. I had it hooked up to a 4K monitor but that died recently and I had to buy something temporary for work. I hate using my laptop monitor, I work with huge spreadsheets and it is a pain in the backside to work on the tiny monitor my work laptop has.

See if you can borrow a newer GPU from a friend and see if that stops it.

Hmm. My son has a 2060 in his gaming PC. He is at some work training conference to learn how to remove the brainstem from a deer to test for some disease, and won't be home for another week. I think I'll swap them out this weekend to test it. Thanks!

 

[balloonshark]

Just throwing some ideas around.

Bad or flaky GPU port, monitor port or cable? I had a new build where two known working cables gave me issues with the new PC but they worked fine with my older PCs.

Could your monitor be going to sleep and then immediately waking back up? Maybe turn off any sleep options in Windows, the monitor, monitor software or graphics software to troubleshoot.

BIOS or BIOS setting issue?

 

[In2Photos]

Do you happen to have G-sync enabled in the Nvidia control panel? I had this problem on my GTX1060 6GB. It worked fine for a while with a GTX1660, but when I swapped cards with my kids I started getting flickering. I tried all kinds of things before disabling G-Sync, and it all went away. My thread is here: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/random-black-screen-while-gaming.2601044/

 

[SMOGZINN]

Do you happen to have G-sync enabled in the Nvidia control panel? I had this problem on my GTX1060 6GB. It worked fine for a while with a GTX1660, but when I swapped cards with my kids I started getting flickering. I tried all kinds of things before disabling G-Sync, and it all went away. My thread is here: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/random-black-screen-while-gaming.2601044/

I am currently using a fairly cheap monitor I picked up on Black Friday after my 4k monitor died. This monitor is not G-sync or FreeSync compatible and I just checked the Nvidia control panel and it does not even have the G-sync options available.

Good idea though, it was worth checking.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Just throwing some ideas around.

Bad or flaky GPU port, monitor port or cable? I had a new build where two known working cables gave me issues with the new PC but they worked fine with my older PCs.

Could your monitor be going to sleep and then immediately waking back up? Maybe turn off any sleep options in Windows, the monitor, monitor software or graphics software to troubleshoot.

BIOS or BIOS setting issue?

Going to try all these suggestions right now. I just created a ultra high performance power plan that turns off all power saving options. We will see if that does anything.
I can easily change out the cable and the ports that are being used. later today I'll do that if the power plan does not fix it. (make one change at a time so you know what worked!)
Thanks for the idea! I don't know if I would have thought of these!