TR Forums

Hey Experts,

Last summer I bought a Samsung SuncMaster SA850 (24" - 1920x1200). It's been great until this week. Its colour and white look so much better than my old Samsung 226bw, which I am continuing to use as a secondary monitor. Over the past few days, there has been developing a flickering 'shimmer' across the right 30-40% of the screen. It is mostly horizontal lines jumping around, just on the right side of the screen. At first it seemed to go away after the monitor warmed up a bit, but now it is always there. If the screen is inactive, the flicker is worse and sometimes that whole section of screen can 'flash' briefly. Right now it's been in use for over an hour, and I can still see it.

I've tried taking screenshots, but it doesn't show up in the image, making me think it is purely from the monitor. I've tried switching cables and also output ports from my graphics card (amd 7970), but there is no improvement. I'm not sure if there are any other settings I could try.

Is my monitor toast? I bought it from NCIX (shipped) and I guess I'll have to ship it back as RMA?

thanks for any advice,

dave

Typical LCD TAB faulty. RMA recommended.

Flickering is caused by unreliable connection between TAB and LCD glass. If it's not severe, flickering goes away after warming up. It will become unusable in the near future. This sort of fault does not appear in screenshot. The LVDS signal from your graphics card is good. The problem is within LCD panel itself.

You could try to disassemble it including the panel. Get a soft cushion inserted between bezel and TAB. Google LCD TAB to see what it looks like.

regards

If you did try fresh cables and different outputs on the video card and the flicker is still there, I think the panel is faulty. I currently have a monitor at work, a Dell 23" monitor (forgot the name but its a fairly low end TN panel with pivot, and all that) and when you look at it from various on-edge angles, you can see a snow effect. Tried plugging it into another laptop, same deal. Hurts my eyes after looking at the monitor for several minutes which affects my reading a lot. Not sure when IT will get a new monitor though.

Enough of my own gripes but from the sound of your situation, I think the panel might be going.

OK - starting the RMA process. Thanks for the info.