Monitors are our portal for accessing the vast virtual 3D worlds of modern AAA titles. But, what can we do when they go kaput? Most modern monitors do not randomly give up working. If a monitor is about to die, it will start showing artefacts and content freezes for quite some time before it finally stops working. Thus, if a panel simply says “No signal”, or does not show anything on system startup, there can be a lot of possible reasons. Most of these do not involve the monitor. So, let’s have a look at them.
1. Check your display cable
Display cables are the most common things that give up. More so if you decided to cheap out on them. Try reconnecting the connection on both the video out port on your motherboard/graphics card and the video in port on your monitor. If this does not help, the easiest way to diagnose such an issue would be to get hold of another working cable and check whether that solves the issue. If your monitor still won’t show up anything, move to the next step.
2. Reseat Your Power Connections
Reseating your power connections can also fix the issue. It might have happened that a power connector had come loose due to long continuous use. Reseat all of the connections from the external power connectors, to the 8-pin (or 4-pin) CPU EPS power delivery cable, the 24-pin ATX power connector, and your PCIe connectors.
3. Reseat Your Graphics Card
Most of the time, your graphics card simply needs a reseat to resume proper functioning. So, unplug the power cables (if your card has any), plug the card out of your system, and put it back in. Try to boot your computer now, and if the PCIe x16 slot was causing any issues, it should be back up and working now.
4. Reseat Your RAM Sticks
Reseating RAM sticks is one of the most popular fixes recommended by troubleshooters because of the insane number of problems caused by the DIMM slot connections. So, don’t forget to open your RAM sticks, give the gold pad a quick and gently clean using a soft eraser, and plug the sticks back in.
A lot of issues get fixed by reseating RAM sticks, and thus you would want to try this too.
If this step fails too, you are in some serious issue, and one or more components of your system have failed. It is time to go for some serious troubleshooting steps.
4. Reset your BIOS (By Reseating the CMOS battery)
Corrupt BIOS settings can also cause the computer to not give any display on your system. Thus, reseating the CMOS battery can help in this case. The CMOS battery provides power to the volatile chip which stores the BIOS values. Thus, reseating this battery will reset the BIOS values, and the computer will boot with its default settings.
5. Connect a 4-pin Speaker to Your Motherboard
Almost every modern motherboard comes with a 4-pin speaker header. Connect one such speaker to your motherboard. Even if you don’t have one on hand, they are very cheap and will cost you less than a dollar.
After you have connected the speaker, boot your PC. Try to carefully note the beep(s) you are getting from the system. Then look up your motherboard manual for the issue detected. You now know which part has failed and swap it respectively.
If you don’t get any beeps, either your monitor has given up or your motherboard is getting any power. Try to get your hands on another monitor, and check whether that works. If another monitor works, you need to change your panel.
However, if this fails, you will have no other option but to individually check each component and check which one has given up.
We hope this article helped you figure out the issue of why your monitor won’t work. Happy gaming!