Screen burn-in

[OkieDan]

Can a bad power adapter cause screen burn-in?

My power supply for my monitor is supposed to be 19V, and it measures 19.9V open circuit. I've had this monitor a few years and never had this issue until recently.

Monitor is Asus VG32AQL1A.
Power adapter is ADP 90LE B

Here's a picture of my screen which should be a solid color instead of what's seen.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Can a bad power adapter cause screen burn-in?

No.

supposed to be 19V, and it measures 19.9V open circuit.

That illustrates why all power supplies should be tested under a realistic load. Your meter only showed the supply is working and that's good. But to see what voltage it is being provided to the monitor, it needs to be measured while it is actually supplying that voltage to the monitor, or at least with a proper "dummy load".

I will say this, however. While 19.9V may sound too high, the monitor's own voltage regulation circuits can easily handle that and adjust as necessary.

It may be a good idea to test your wall outlet. Every home and every computer user should have access to a AC Outlet Tester to ensure the wall outlet is properly wired and grounded to Earth ground. I recommend one that displays the actual voltage (instead of just LEDs) and a GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupt) indicator as it can be used to test bathroom and kitchen outlets (outlets near water) too. These testers can be found for your type and voltage outlet, foreign or domestic, (like this one for the UK, or this one for German outlets) at most home improvement stores, or even the electrical department at Wal-Mart. Use it to test all the outlets in the home and if a fault is shown, have it fixed by a qualified electrician.

If your mains is too high (and I had that happen to me by a bad transformer tap), that could result in power supplies outputting higher expected voltages - especially power "wart" type supplies.

Burn-in is caused by the same image (or objects) being displayed in the exact same screen location for extended periods of time. That has nothing to do with the power supply. Your backlighting may be showing its age, or your brightness and contrast may need adjusting.

One thing I'm not sure about is I can see faint images of your Desktop icons in the lower left. That does not seem right. I might call up a solid white screen (a blank Word doc will do) to see if those icons are still visible through the document page.

 

[Dr. Dro]

It's insane for an IPS to have that much image retention... this panel is likely defective. In any case, "street wisdom" says that you should leave your display at maximum brightness displaying a pure white image for some time to see if the LCD "resets", it's been reported to work. IPS monitors don't suffer from permanent burn-in, but they can exhibit image retention. I'd still look at this as a defective panel, though. That much retention from a game lobby is just not right, even if you left it open for a week straight.

If this monitor is new, consider returning it or an RMA. If the monitor is old, consider a replacement.

 

[Frick]

Some other "street wisdom" (aka reddit) says to run this for a few cycles.

 

[Bill_Bright]

If this monitor is new, consider returning it or an RMA. If the monitor is old, consider a replacement.

He said he's had it for "a few years".

Some other "street wisdom" (aka reddit) says to run this for a few cycles.

Nice except that is not full screen.

 

[Dr. Dro]

He said he's had it for "a few years".

True I somehow missed that. Yep, that panel's definitely about to croak IMO. It's OK for IPSes to have image retention up to like a minute or two after the exact same image has been displayed for a very long time, but it should disappear relatively fast. It shouldn't be permanent nor a common occurrence.

 

[ixi]

Asus quality right there. Ditch it...

Been using Acer Predator x32 for 3 or even 4 years, no issues. And costs half of that time asus rog maximusgigachadRGB 32 ips.

Sad to see your monitor go meeeeh.

 

[Frick]

Nice except that is not full screen.

It's youtube, you can run it in full screen.

 

[TheLostSwede]

It's insane for an IPS to have that much image retention... this panel is likely defective. In any case, "street wisdom" says that you should leave your display at maximum brightness displaying a pure white image for some time to see if the LCD "resets", it's been reported to work. IPS monitors don't suffer from permanent burn-in, but they can exhibit image retention. I'd still look at this as a defective panel, though. That much retention from a game lobby is just not right, even if you left it open for a week straight.

If this monitor is new, consider returning it or an RMA. If the monitor is old, consider a replacement.

I had similar issues with my old Asus, if you turned it off, it'd go away after 10-15 minutes, but it was really annoying as it happened quite quickly at the desktop and it would be really obvious if you had something dark and then something light afterwards that you were looking at. I ended up with three panels on that display, the original one didn't have it, but the internal power board died and they messed up the panel when they swapped that out, so they had to replace the panel. After about six months, it started to have the ghosting, so they swapped that panel out for another one, that started to have the same issue, but not quite as bad, after another six months, by which time it was out of warranty.
Admittedly it wasn't this bad, but yeah, not unheard of.

 

[Bill_Bright]

It's youtube, you can run it in full screen.

Not really. Yes, you can run Youtube at full screen but not that test. You still end up with a top and bottom banner. Or at least I do here.

 

[r00tcz]

19.9V instead of 19V is perfectly fine and have nothing to do with the burn-in.
Input DC jack voltage is rarely directly used for anything, all logic (both monitor board with inputs and LCD panel board) uses switching DC-DC converters and this will produce perfectly stable 3.3V/1.8V or whatever is needed. It would likely run perfectly fine from 15V or 22V too. Only limit is usually capacitors and maximum voltage of the switching PSU regulator chip, but in general specs are always quite conservative.
Only part of the monitor I have seen directly running of the input DC voltage might be LED backlight, however it's usually constant current driver (can be PWM based or linear for flicker free backlight) so exact input voltage doesn't matter either. Overall this is not a problem or a culprit of your problems.

Burn-in like this is always caused by the panel itself and it's physical properties of crystals etc. Some panel types are more susceptible to it, but unlike OLEDs, on LCDs this should be temporary. They can usually be cleaned by running the white noise or special patterns on them overnight.

 

[Frick]

Not really. Yes, you can run Youtube at full screen but not that test. You still end up with a top and bottom banner. Or at least I do here.

That's either a setting or something else on your end, those bars are supposed to go away after a bit.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Nope. The text in those bars went away, but the black bars remained. The sides go out to the monitors edge, but not top and bottom. Same with my laptop.

 

[Shrek]

can be run full screen

 

[Bill_Bright]

Hmmm, I get the same with that one too, Shrek. There's a small black border at top and small taskbar size border on the bottom.

Are you sure it is going from bezel edge to bezel edge?

 

[Makalite]

Yikes, that's rough.

And I be hesitant about OLED?

Still hesitant anyway...

 

[Shrek]

Hmmm, I get the same with that one too, Shrek. There's a small black border at top and small taskbar size border on the bottom.

Are you sure it is going from bezel edge to bezel edge?

Covers the screen for me

2560 x 1440 (16:9)

 

[Bill_Bright]

Covers the screen for me

Okay. Then if both you and Frick see bezel to bezel, side to side and top to bottom, then it must be on this end.

Hmmm, running 1920 x 1200. That's 16:10. That might be it.

Thanks.

 

[OkieDan]

Thanks all, I'll be shopping for a new monitor soon.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Yikes, that's rough.

And I be hesitant about OLED?

Still hesitant anyway...

Don't worry about a thing, it'll be alright~

Just don't disable the OLED care functionality such as pixel shifting, don't go ham on the brightness and you'll be golden. Almost 2 years with my G3 already. No obsessive black background, hidden taskbar etc. I even play games that keep an user ID on screen at all times. No issue.

Thanks all, I'll be shopping for a new monitor soon.

Looks like it's time to treat yourself to something nice! Shame your monitor decayed like that.

 

[Chomiq]

Yeah it's temporary image retention on IPS, it's a thing but you really have to run something for hours at high brightness to really force it.

That being said I remember playing some of the arcade games in Yakuza or Judgment and they had scanline effect around one part of the HUD which somehow managed to "burn" itself into the screen after 15min or so of playing it. I could go back to PS5 menu and see that one section of the HUD imprinted on the screen. It faded away eventually but it shows that temporary image retention is a thing that not only happens on OLED.

I've also seen this on my old BenQ 16:10 IPS after working for hours on a word document with a 50:50 split to a PDF doc. After 6-7 hours of a binge like that I would have a full on bright stripe in the middle of the screen from where the windows were divided.

 

[RejZoR]

I've had same "burn in" just randomly happen on my Gigabyte IPS monitor that I had some time ago. It just out of the blue started happening. It disappeared after I left monitor over night without any power (unplugged from wall and computer).

 

[R-T-B]

Man my OLED after 5 years looks great compared to this...

 

[Shrek]

Yeah it's temporary image retention on IPS, it's a thing but you really have to run something for hours at high brightness to really force it.

I'd argue that one doesn't need brightness at all.

 

[R-T-B]

I'd argue that one doesn't need brightness at all.

*HDR execs want to know your location*