144hz flicker after monitor's extended power off

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h2knacho
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144hz flicker after monitor's extended power off

Post by h2knacho » 06 Mar 2019, 20:22

Good evening!

I found this board while searching about my monitor issues. I'm wondering if someone here has experienced something similar and can give advice.

My setup: 3 x VIOTEK GN32Q 32" WQHD 144 Hz Curved Gaming Monitor / GTX 1080 TI / 3x DisplayPort cables (StarTech.com DP14MM3M DisplayPort 1.4 Cable - 9.8 ft / 3m - VESA Certified)

I'm running three monitors from the GTX 1080TI at 7680 x 1440 @ 144hz.

The monitors seems to work fine @ 144hz, EXCEPT...

At night I leave my PC running, but I turn the power off on all three monitors. When I power on the monitors the next day, I get horizontal flickering lines across all three monitors. Similar to this -> https://imgur.com/M36aVF0 -> but only about 2 inches up from the bottom of the screens.

When switching to 120hz, the issue goes away MOST of the time, but still comes back sometimes.

I have recently bought three new DP cables (the Startech.com DP14MM3M). Since buying these cables, the horizontal line flickering goes away after about 5 or so minutes.

Anyone have advice on what is causing this and what I can do to fix it?

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Re: 144hz flicker after monitor's extended power off

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 07 Mar 2019, 18:26

Does this problem show up with any other monitors if you mix them in your setup?
I don't have enough information to diagnose if this might be a GTX behaviour or monitor behaviour. It's possibly monitor behaviour.

What happens if you put the computer to "Sleep" instead? (Start Menu -> Sleep)
Does the flaws stop?

That should automatically turn off your monitors without needing you to touch the power buttons. (And probably save you a bit off dollars off the electric bill too). My computer can wake from sleep faster than I can power-up monitors, so I use the Sleep method if I want to turn off all monitors simultaneously with one mouse click.

If the flaws stop, there is possibly some kind of initialization bug if the monitors are powered cycled while the computer is running.

DisplayPort is more prone to potential hotplug-event bugs than VGA/DVI is, so power off/on the monitor is equivalent to a hotplug event for the monitor. A sleep event might be gentler.

If you don't want to sleep your computer, but you want to sleep your monitors, you could do it via command line such as https://www.itworld.com/article/2699995 ... sleep.html
You can add Windows shortcuts to run the command that puts your monitors to sleep without you needing to physically touch your monitors. A command to force the monitors to sleep can be useful if your motherboard has sleep bugs (crashes in sleep) -- that can be crappy when that happens, but not the end of the world with a "sleep-the-monitors" software command or utility.

Monitors are often very sleep-friendly (because they do that automatically during idle), few people realize that they can sleep the monitors manually from the PC too!
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h2knacho
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Joined: 06 Mar 2019, 20:07

Re: 144hz flicker after monitor's extended power off

Post by h2knacho » 08 Mar 2019, 00:34

Thanks for the fast reply!

Your suggestion makes sense, but while trying out Sleep Mode for the first time, my monitors do not seem to receive any type of signal after I wake up the PC. I have to then reboot my PC to get it up and functioning correctly.

I did notice something interesting, if I unplug one monitor, leaving only 2 plugged into my video card, it will wake up from Sleep Mode just fine, but not with 3 plugged in.

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Re: 144hz flicker after monitor's extended power off

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 09 Mar 2019, 02:41

Strange. So three connected monitors cause a kind of a weird failure.

Try investigating GPU tech support
What vendor graphics card? Are you able to open a tech support request with your vendor? There are known bugs with some graphics cards when 3 or 4 monitors are connected. Your card might be possibly one of them, and there might be a known workaround (e.g. which ports to connect in which order, a graphics driver upgrade, etc).

Try 2 DP + 1 HDMI
Does your monitors support 144Hz by HDMI? Most newer monitors support high-Hz HDMI nowadays. (My ViewSonic XG2530 accepts 240Hz over HDMI). I ask because there are times where the "2 DisplayPort + 1 HDMI" combination may work more reliably than "3 DisplayPort".

Try investigating EMI
Also one theory: 3 DisplayPort is somehow causing a signal weakening effect that does not happen with 2 DisplayPort. Not sure if that's a cause or not. Whatever you do, try to keep all signal cables away from power cables -- at least 6 to 12 inch of separation between power wires and video cable wires. And keep your video cable away from power bars / power supplies / wall power outlets / motors / transformers / etc. RFI is a longshot but it's a stone not to be left uncovered since a 1% signal weakening (because a 3rd plug is used) might push it below the noisefloor of radiofrequency interference. Much like the LG 5K monitor getting scrambled by a WiFi router -- but at a more tiny/subtle/unexpected scale. These glitch gremlins unfortunately happen far more often than one thinks.
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