Advice for Samsung B2230 temporary black screen.
 

Hi all.

Since last night (during some arma 2) my system has been playing up. The montior randomly blacks out (like a computer in the last stages of shutdown). The computer is not affected in anyway and simply turning the monitor on and off fixes the issue for a few minutes. At first I thought this would be down to a bad hdmi cable. However since replacing it the issue has still happened, albeit it now only starts to happen after a while. I'm pretty sure its the monitor as the gpu is not showing any changes in temp from the norm (26C idle, ~ 40c load). Also I presume the psu could be an issue but conisdering it is only around a year old I find this unlikely. should I replace the monitor or is it something more serious?

Ta.

It looks like that model has an internal power supply. Samsung years ago had an issue with capacitors in the monitors power supply failing. You can tell by looking at the tops of the capacitors, they should be flat, when failing they bulge. I have a Samsung SyncMaster 226 BW I repaired a few years ago and still use. It was acting the same way and then eventually failed to come on at all.

Back then it was happening in their TVs also.

I have a couple of year old Samsung TV that has started to fail. It has an internal power supply as well. It turns on and screams for two minutes before settling down.

So far all fingers are pointing towards the monitor then. Do you think it would be a good idea to run futremark or something along those lines to check it isn't hardware?

UPDATE: two contradictions have appeared. Firstly, the monitor is making that "warm electrical goods" smell and secondly the psu occasionally makes this slight whining noise. I've looked up the psu issues before and it is apparently nothing to worry about but I thought it might help

With the squealing it may be the power supply or the LCD panel controller/driver. I have never replaced the latter. My former mother-in-law had a Toshiba Laptop that started doing that and it got worse and worse, it was still under warranty and they repaired it. They replaced the LCD controller.

The smell would make me think the capacitors are failing. They can just bulge or start actually leaking and smell. One thing I have seen when they get worse is if you shut the monitor off it takes a while for the screen to light up. It acts like it is in suspend mode and take a while to wake up.

I have also been having a similar problem whilst playing arma2 and planetside2, i am also currently using an oldish Samsung monitor so i would agree with everyone else and say it is most likely the monitor that you are having problems with.