Question 144hz Monitor Screen shrink and won't display at 144hz

[Justin Yoon]

I run a dual monitor setup (60hz + 144hz) and recently switched to an itx build but after a few days my 144hz monitor started behaving badly at startup. Now it will only start at 60hz/100hz with no option to increase refresh rate or also scale down to 720p with black bars all around the screen. The only solution so far has been to restart multiple times. My original displayport cable was actually a little too big to fit in my case so I bought one with a thinner housing and I figured it might be faulty so I bought another one and the issue persisted. Then I found out about VESA certified cables and bought one of those and no change. Is there something wrong with my monitor? Or my gpu? Or have I just been getting extremely bad luck buying cables? Not really sure what happened while building because this didn't really happen in my atx build. Any help is appreciated.

Specs:
CPU: I7-5930k
Mobo: AsRock X99e-itx
GPU: GTX 1060 6gb
OS: Windows 10
Monitor 144hz: BenQ XL242OZ
Monitor 60hz: Acer K242HL

The display cables I've been using:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078HVDMW2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07F7YV4BR/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0098HVZBE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[Aeacus]

What you're describing is dying monitor, rather than display cable issue. Also, your monitor is at least 5 years old, if not more. Here, i'd start looking towards new monitor.