Display problems.

703810995 · 21 Oct 2025 at 22:23

Thanks for your suggestions and answers to my questions. I appreciate it.

I think I might prioritise finding new monitors whilst I can before the current ones go off completely, which is looking to be very soon judging by their symptoms!

Your advice does seem to make sense and I will post back if I conduct any further tests.

To answer your questions, transporting my monitor isn't such an easy task either! The test monitor was only small. I can't say anything about the quality of the internals of the test monitor, but it was just a standard Dell probably not even 21" and I'm guessing 1280 x 1024.

NetMan · 22 Oct 2025 at 18:14

Didn't realise the monitor you borrowed was an old low res 4:3 style.

Perfectly understand not easy to lug stuff around if you don't drive / have a car I have the same issue.

I guess if you had a TV with a HDMI port you would have already tried using that?

You can sometimes pickup cheap basic 1080p monitors second hand when people just want rid because they have purchased something better but its finding one local that you can collect without transport...

703810995 · 22 Oct 2025 at 19:39

Thanks NetMan.

I guess if you had a TV with a HDMI port you would have already tried using that?

No, I don't have that.

703810995 · 23 Oct 2025 at 19:40

I managed to test the monitor with another PC and it suffered similar issues, so as I am thinking it's probably a monitor issue, have decided to buy new monitors.

Thank you all for all your advice and suggestions.

NetMan · 23 Oct 2025 at 20:00

Very odd for two monitors to fail at exactly the same time with the same fault but at least you have a way forward now.

703810995 · 23 Oct 2025 at 21:55

One of the monitors failed first, then the other, but I still wasn't sure if it was the monitor or something else.

703810995 · 24 Oct 2025 at 21:43

Personally I would ditch your HDMI to DVI cable and just use a HDMI cable (onboard VGA connect output then set to = D-sub/HDMI).

Would you believe I managed to procure a monitor and a PC for testing, but not an HDMI to HDMI cable? Haha.

If the issue was using a DVI to HDMI cable, then I would've thought that the monitors wouldn't have worked previously before malfunctioning, however, I will still be anxious until I see the new monitors actually working, as the manual for them say:

"Using a DVI to HDMI / DP (DisplayPort) to HDMI cable may cause compatibility issues."

This is worrying!

The graphics card does have a mini HDMI option (includes adapter for normal HDMI) and the onboard also has this option, so I can physically connect both monitors to the PC via HDMI to HDMI, but I would have to investigate if my card, CPU and onboard would support using the card and onboard at the same time. Let's hope I don't need to!

703810995 · Sunday at 16:13

The flashing problem doesn't seem to be present with the new monitors so it's possible that it was the monitors that were faulty. The flickery problem is still present but it happens only at the top of the monitor. It is not anywhere near as bad as before. It happens with both the brand new HDMI 2.0 cable that I bought and my existing DVI cable. I did have to use an HDMI to mini HDMI adapter as the card only has the mini option. I think the adapter is version 1.4 (not certain). According to websites, Version 1.4 supports a maximum resolution of 3840x2160, but I might buy a new one to check just to be sure. The card only supports HDMI 1.3a, which does or does not support higher than 1920 x 1080 depending on which website you visit!

Unfortunately, I have other priorities now! I'm stuck at maximum 1920 x 1080 resolution with the default Nouveau drivers and attempting to install Nvidia drivers has rendered the PC unbootable. Dual monitors is also not being handled very well with crashing of the screen.