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PG348Q flickering white lines appearing randomly

Saeran
Level 7
Greetings,

I have a relatively new (less than 2 months since purchase) Asus ROG SWIFT PG348Q. Last week when I was playing black desert online, the screen started "tearing" randomly and white, artifact-like horizontal lines started appearing all over the screen, displacing the image and making it look as if the screen was having a fit - shaking up and down and going haywire. This didn't persist for longer than maybe a minute or two, but the issue started re-appearing seemingly at random shortly afterwards, with no identifiable consistent trigger. So far I've had the issue while playing various games, watching youtube videos, browsing chrome etc.

I tried narrowing down the possible causes, so far with little luck. Here is what I did:
1) seeing as the screen previously worked just fine (for weeks), I assumed that the issue might be driver-related, and downloaded the newest nvidia drivers, used the clean installation option, and hoped for the best. I was left wallowing in disappointment.

2) considering that artifacts are usually a sign of GPU issues (specifically bad VRAM), I downloaded furmark (the one included in the toolkit for my asus gtx1080ti poseidon gpu) and ran the stress test. This did manage to trigger the problem, and so I thought that the issue was indeed GPU related after all. So I swapped out the, presumably faulty, GPU and plugged my old good gtx980 that has been tried and tested over the course of the last two years, and it did work. For a while at least. But the issue did resurface eventually, even if slightly less severe than before. This is when I started suspecting, that there might be something faulty in monitor itself.

3) after swapping my 1080ti back in (used a different PCIe slot just in case), I tried changing the DP cable to my backup one, and once again I got rid of the issue for a whooping total of 3 hours, after which it re-appeared with a vengeance.

4) at this point I was convinced that it must be something with the panel itself, or gsync module, so I tried messing with monitor settings to see if I could narrow it down. At one point, lowering the overclock frequency to 95 Hz triggered the problem to such a severe level that I couldn't see anything on the screen. However, I couldn't replicate it again no matter how many times I tried. I ran tests with:
Gsync/overclock
on on
off on
on off
off off

The issue usually disappears if the monitor is powered off and on again, but I've had several instances where this didn't help and the issue persisted through the restart.

5) I've tried looking for alternate possible software causes for the issue and only discovered a possible issue with the windows error reporting service, which I disabled to no avail, as the issue persisted (after computer restart of course).

6) Seeing as I'm left with little choice, I asked my brother to lend me his monitor (same as mine but older) to see whether the root of the issue is with my rig, or the monitor. So far I've been using it for about 4 hours, ran furmark, watched videos and did all the other things that could have been triggers for the problem yet didn't notice even the slightest hint of any flickering or white lines.

Here is the only example I've been fast enough to record (sorry for the terrible video quality):
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3 REPLIES 3

Saeran
Level 7
My "supposedly" repaired monitor arrived today. It wasn't fixed. In fact, the issue has gotten much worse. The tiniest vibrations cause the screen to go mental, and considering how white lines flicker regardless of whether there's any input connected to my monitor, I'd say it's not hard to figure out where the issue lies (hint: not the computer).

How many times do you think I'd have to send it back before they replace it with a working piece of hardware? Is there anything I can do to speed up the process? I loathe the idea of having to use my prehistoric full HD backup for another month before they send me back (hopefully not) yet another faulty piece of overpriced junk.

Saeran wrote:
My "supposedly" repaired monitor arrived today. It wasn't fixed. In fact, the issue has gotten much worse. The tiniest vibrations cause the screen to go mental, and considering how white lines flicker regardless of whether there's any input connected to my monitor, I'd say it's not hard to figure out where the issue lies (hint: not the computer).

How many times do you think I'd have to send it back before they replace it with a working piece of hardware? Is there anything I can do to speed up the process? I loathe the idea of having to use my prehistoric full HD backup for another month before they send me back (hopefully not) yet another faulty piece of overpriced junk.


I just had this show up on my monitor out of the blue. Any idea what it was, or what might have caused it? This was after having it with no problems for just under 3 years. I don't even know what this phenomenon is called, all other posts I have found were something different.

Kylis wrote:
I just had this show up on my monitor out of the blue. Any idea what it was, or what might have caused it? This was after having it with no problems for just under 3 years. I don't even know what this phenomenon is called, all other posts I have found were something different.

Sometimes a bad video cable/connector - try a different one (DP/HDMI/DVI/etc), confirm no bent/damaged pins or debris inside the connector housings.
Sometimes a bad video source - try a different GPU card (or even the built-in iGPU, if you have one) or a different computer.

If the video cable is good and video source is good then the problem is definitely the monitor. Usually a component on the display driver board, it could be repairable (or it could have bad BGA, bad ASICs, etc, which need full rework and proprietary parts), most likely swapping the whole logic board will be the best and cheapest solution. Panel is probably still good, PSU module is probably still good.
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[/Korth]