Monitor going black briefly [Inteference from heaters]

Separate area for niche lag issues including unexpected causes and/or electromagnetic interference (ECC = retransmits = lag). Interference (EMI, EMF) of all kinds (wired, wireless, external, internal, environment, bad component) can cause error-correction latencies like a bad modem connection. Troubleshooting may require university degree. Your lag issue is likely not EMI. Please read this before entering sub-forum.
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This subforum is for advanced users only. This separate area is for niche or unexpected lag issues such as electromagnetic interference (EMI, EMF, electrical, radiofrequency, etc). Interference of all kinds (wired, wireless, external, internal, environment, bad component) can cause error-correction (ECC) latencies like a bad modem connection, except internally in a circuit. ECC = retransmits = lag. Troubleshooting may require university degree. Your lag issue is likely not EMI.
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olofsson_tom
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Monitor going black briefly [Inteference from heaters]

Post by olofsson_tom » 06 Nov 2021, 10:11

I have the acer 390hz monitor, and an asus 240 as secondary and sometimes, mainly on the acer the screen goes black for like 2 seconds when something changes nearby in the power grid. Like if i turn on a heater, turn on the ceiling light and such. Not every time, but sometimes.
I have a apc surgearrest which the computer and monitors are hooked up through.
Could some ferrite cores on the power cables to computer/monitor help? If so, do i put them close to the outlet or the computer/monitors? And could it help to put on other electronic devices nearby, such as heaters for example?

olofsson_tom
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Re: Monitor going black briefly

Post by olofsson_tom » 08 Nov 2021, 07:22

Update: since i got the apc surgearrest a couple days ago its happening a lot less, but still sometimes. I ordered a couple more so that the heaters i have in kinda close proximity and also a dehumidifier thats is also located nearby will be hooked up on those as well.
Was thinking id try to also put ferrite beads on the power cables on all of these appliances and computer/monitors as well. Does anyone have experience on this? Could the ferrite chokes get hot or anything like that, like if its on a cable of a heater with sometimes big power draw?

SixRavens
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Re: Monitor going black briefly

Post by SixRavens » 08 Nov 2021, 10:26

olofsson_tom wrote: ↑
08 Nov 2021, 07:22
Update: since i got the apc surgearrest a couple days ago its happening a lot less, but still sometimes. I ordered a couple more so that the heaters i have in kinda close proximity and also a dehumidifier thats is also located nearby will be hooked up on those as well.
Was thinking id try to also put ferrite beads on the power cables on all of these appliances and computer/monitors as well. Does anyone have experience on this? Could the ferrite chokes get hot or anything like that, like if its on a cable of a heater with sometimes big power draw?
Unlikely ferrite beads will do anything for you, since they are used for suppressesing high-frequency noise. And yes, in theory they can get warm, cuz they turn RF to heat. Wiki says that heat is noticeable only in extreme cases, dont think it is possible in home conditions. Mine are always cool. And always seem useless)

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Re: Monitor going black briefly

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 08 Nov 2021, 11:07

Certain interference may cause video to go black briefly. I know one of my monitors go black everytime I turn ON/OFF a specific LED desk lamp that has a semi-faulty transformer. It's like a miniature electromagnetic pulse. It's because it has a high-frequency switching transformer that has extremely poor PFC (Power Factor Correction) and seems to surge an interference pulse everytime it is switched ON or switched OFF. The interference is not too different from the LG 5K wifi debacle from a few years ago. Ferrite beads DO help those certain cases (a little bit, e.g. reduce odds of going black), but YMMV.

However, a lot of situations monitors going black briefly can be caused by totally different situations. For example, a FreeSync (AMD) VRR monitor running on an NVIDIA graphics card, sometimes has some occasional faulty LFC logic where a frametime might go below VRR Hz range. In this case, a brief period of black may occur during sudden framerate dips on certain systems. This has been an annoying defect with certain system+GPU+monitor combos (not all of them).

There are thousands of obscure reasons why a monitor goes briefly black, and ferrite beads may or may not help. But since you said your black periods improved massively with a power conditioning device -- I am now inclined interference is probably a significant cause of your specific issue in particular for your specific situation. The problem is it's so difficult to troubleshoot you literally have to whac-a-mole. Ferrite beads may not help, but they don't hurt either (as long as you're not damaging your wires such as forcing stiff wires to bend too tightly while looping around ferrite beads). But you should try to concurrently do multiple simultaneous mitigations (large attack surface, buckshot style) if you don't know the exact nature of your interference. You're shooting blind as interference is not easy to troubleshoot with cheap equipment.

But this is correct -- ferrite beads suppress high frequency noise -- and it's hard to say what kind of interference you are getting as there is orders of magnitude more electromagnetic spectrum that we cannot see with our eyes or equipment. EMI can even span as low as audio frequencies all the way to gamma ray frequencies so it's sometimes a needle in a haystack.

Importantly....
....The inverse square law is your friend
Double distance quarters the interference between parallel wires

(Yes, yes, you academics, it gets more complex. Interference can also follow an inverse cube law (1/8th weaker at double distance) for specific situations but for simplicity, interference between two parallel wires follows an inverse square law. That is what we will use here for simplicity since a computer is full of wires, full of parallel circuit paths, full of things that transmit data from point A to B in a line, etc)

Even slight distance increase is sometimes enough to stop occasional blackouts, when it comes to inducted (over the air) interference. So, get more distance of your data cables above the floor (hidden wires below floor), from the back wall (hidden wires in wall), and away from power cords (e.g. appliance cords that can inject crosstalked interference to a nearby wire that happens to be connected to your computer). Even moving the desk/ccomputer/computer wires 6 inches further away from the wall can help reduce blackouts. Think of it, your DisplayPort cable dangles behind the desk, touching the wall at the back. Imagine electricity wires only 1 inch behind the drywall. There may be electricity wires inside the wall, inducting interference into your DisplayPort cable as your heater cycles on/off. 1 inch becomes 2 inch (1/4) becomes 4 inch (1/16) becomes 8 inches (1/64). So you might get 1/64th interference by moving the computer wires 8 inches away from the back wall (if by chance DisplayPort cable was formerly only 1 inch from wall-hidden electricity wires). Boom, blackouts *might* suddenly stop if it was just by chance your DisplayPort cable just too close to a hidden electricity wire.... Mathematically, you have to stack the odds into your favour. Obviously the interference might be somewhere else (it often is) but you need to try all interference mitigations simultaneously.

Also test a computer case with 6 steel sides -- instead of a cheap aluminum computer case with transparent glass cover too (Faraday Cage your computer), and try to use heavily shielded cables / wireless mice / etc. Buy massively more DisplayPort cable than you need, e.g. DisplayPort 2.0 cable even for DisplayPort 1.3 or 1.4 -- this gives you more overhead to resist interference as you're not pushing limits that can be easily tipped dominoe-effect by weak interference.

Try putting your heater behind you -- add air gap more distance between the heater and the computer. Even 50% more distance between one of the computer wires, and the heater/heater wire can help. Even plugging the heater in a different wall outlet can also help (but be careful about using extension cords with heaters -- can be a fire hazard as many cheap extension cords cannot handle the wattage of a heater).

Interference can be wired (transmit over wire) or wireless (wireless induction between two wires too close together).

While major interference noticeably hurting computer operation -- affects less than 1% of computer users, it's a huge problem when counted by millions of users. This is stuff well known by electronics engineer Masters degrees and Ph.D degrees, but relatively unknown to most everyday users.

100% science here.
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olofsson_tom
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Re: Monitor going black briefly

Post by olofsson_tom » 08 Nov 2021, 12:04

Great info, big thanks :)
Already done most of the things you mentioned, separate cables as much as possible etc.
The room is also a former garage made into gaming room so the power cables are mounted outside on the wall, mostly close to the ceiling. Had an electrician install cables down to a few new outlets. Good stiff shielded cable and outlets, Schneider i believe.
Was mostly wondering if the ferrites can hurt anything or be dangerous. I dont care should they not do anything, they were cheap. Might as well try. Heard heaters, airconditioners and dehumidifiers can be real bad EMI-wise and i have all those things in different parts of the house so i want to do what i can since i play competitive games. Unsure if ive had input/lag problems but i guess it can surely do something bad once in a while if its able to bug out the monitor

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Re: Monitor going black briefly [Inteference from heaters]

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 08 Nov 2021, 12:08

olofsson_tom wrote: ↑
08 Nov 2021, 12:04
Great info, big thanks :)
Already done most of the things you mentioned, separate cables as much as possible etc.
The room is also a former garage made into gaming room so the power cables are mounted outside on the wall, mostly close to the ceiling. Had an electrician install cables down to a few new outlets. Good stiff shielded cable and outlets, Schneider i believe.
Was mostly wondering if the ferrites can hurt anything or be dangerous. I dont care should they not do anything, they were cheap. Might as well try. Heard heaters, airconditioners and dehumidifiers can be real bad EMI-wise and i have all those things i different parts of the house so i want to do what i can since i play competitive games
Ferrite is not dangerous. It either is harmless or helps. Biggest risk factor is breaking wires when you try to wind them too tightly around a ferrite loop (for those types of ferrite). Better yet, just snap on a ferrite snap-on to avoid risk of damage to wires. Generally I wouldn't bother at all with heater electricity plugs, but I would with other computer cables (e.g. USB cables) and switching power supply systems (e.g. 12V low-voltage halogen/LED desk lamps) in an environment that is known-interference like things suddenly improving the way you desccribed.

Also, garages are also locations of the electric panel, where all your house wiring goes into. So keep your computer far away from that nexus as you can -- The length of a ten foot pole is usually enough (if possible). Usually house entry wire and panel is well shielded but the wires coming out of each circuit breaker usually aren't shielded (e.g. wire encased just in plastics). The cycling of a dryer or central air conditioner can send a bigger inteference pulse from the breaker area than certain heaters, for example.

Also, keep in mind some heaters emit less interference. The heater that generates the biggest interference is the type of heater that coils wires (biggest induction pulse over the air to more distant wires) -- they behave as accidental inductors. The straight-nichrome-line heaters, and those straight-quartz-tube-line heaters generally seem to emit a little less interference due to the straighter heating-conductor path. Big coils with lots of power = like a transformer/inductor = bigger interference pulse transmitted at a bigger distance over the air. So trying a different type of heater without coils may help! And adjust/size the heater to minimize unnecessary cycling, as the cycling moment is the point of biggest interference pulse.

While cycling of any form doesn't help the over-the-wire interference of the sudden load of a heater cycling -- how the heater coils the heating element, can have a huge dramatic effect of the intensity of the over-the-air interference (induction), especially during cycling. Motors suddenly cycling (in A/C and fridges) are also another common sudden-interference-pulse culprit.
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xSaqe
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Re: Monitor going black briefly [Inteference from heaters]

Post by xSaqe » 08 Aug 2022, 18:26

Hi!
I'm very new to this forum and i don't really know if replaying to this old post and bumping it up again is allowed but i have the same issue as OP and i'm desperate for help. If i did something against the rules of forum or w/e delete this reply.
As your monitor was acer im assuming you have/had XV252QF model. I have the exact same one and i'm also having the same issue with screen going black for a brief second. Some guy from reddit told me it's most likely caused by EMI and by typing it in google i found this post.
If OP sees this reply by any chance i've got 2 questions.
1. Did you fix the issue?
2. Did the ferrite beads help?

olofsson_tom
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Re: Monitor going black briefly [Inteference from heaters]

Post by olofsson_tom » 09 Aug 2022, 06:09

xSaqe wrote: ↑
08 Aug 2022, 18:26
Hi!
I'm very new to this forum and i don't really know if replaying to this old post and bumping it up again is allowed but i have the same issue as OP and i'm desperate for help. If i did something against the rules of forum or w/e delete this reply.
As your monitor was acer im assuming you have/had XV252QF model. I have the exact same one and i'm also having the same issue with screen going black for a brief second. Some guy from reddit told me it's most likely caused by EMI and by typing it in google i found this post.
If OP sees this reply by any chance i've got 2 questions.
1. Did you fix the issue?
2. Did the ferrite beads help?
Pretty much yes, happens once in a while but its rare now. Added ferrites to both ends of all power cables going to anything near the computer, and also to dehumidifier, ac, heaters, fans, washing machine, dishwasher etc. Anything with big power draw and some kind of electrical motor. Also everything i could i connected with an apc surgearrest too, either power strip or single connector. These are supposed to have a little bit of emi filtering in them, and you also get the added benefit of protection against lightning damage during thunder. I also try to keep all heaters, big fans and such as far away from the pc as i can, and connected to a different outlet.

Did all this for peace of mind, to have the cleanest electrical system at home i could. The acer 390hz still goes black sometimes if i flick the light switch for example in the same room. But nothing else seems to make enough of a surge/dip or whatever it is causing it. So theres no random blackouts when gaming or such.
I think this monitor just has a poor internal power supply, that is budget and too sensitive. Power cable goes straight in. I have an asus 240hz as secondary monitor and those have an external power supply on the cable, and that one has never had any issue whatsoever.
I dont think i have any emi issues, i just think its nice to know youve done what you can, and everything is protected.
You could put multiple ferrites on the cable to the acer monitor and you should be fine i guess, until the new 500+ hz monitors replace this one ;D

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