Question Dell S2721DGF turns on and off randomly

[barendlouw]

Hi all

I recently completed my first personal built rig. I have ran into quite a few hitches, but all seems okay now. Except that my new monitor (dell s2721dgf) will start turning on and off in a weird cycle after using the pc for around 30 min, it doesnt matter what you do on the pc (idle or gaming). I find it really odd, I have to unplug the power supply of the monitor and restart my pc to fix it. Not sure if it is related to the displayport port or HDMI, as it has happened whilst using both. I have the newest radeon drivers installed, and windows download the drivers it thought necessary, but I havent installed any motherboard drivers. I am unsure it is a software or hardware problem..or how to troubleshoot it further.

RX 6800XT Merc 319
Ryzen 5 5600x
Asus B550 Strix gaming-F
650W gold plus PSU
2 x 8gb 3200Mhz RAM (although I saw in the bios it was at 2666Mhz for some reason)

 

[Ralston18]

Do you still have your old monitor or even a TV that you can try on your newly completed rig?

Are you able to try the new monitor on another known working computer?

Determine if the problem stays with your rig or follows the new monitor.

You can also look in Reliability History and Event Viewer to see if Windows is capturing any error codes, warnings, or even informational events that match the 30 minute cycle.

Turn off all power savers - keep a list. If the problem ends then restore power savers one by one until (maybe) the problem returns.

RAM will drop down and run at slowest supported speed. It may be capable of 3200Mhz but there is some constraint then that constraint will need to be identified. The motherboard's User Guide/Manual should provide the necessary information regarding supported configurations.

However, leave the RAM alone for now.

Objective is to identify the culprit and hopefully fix the random power cycling.

 

[barendlouw]

Hi Ralston, thank you very much for the reply. So the monitor was working fine now with the HDMI connected and refresh rate at 144hz (its the max with the HDMI cable) untill I loaded up Warzone. Was playing for about 20min then it started cycling again. I then connected the displayport whilst afk ingame and played for about 10min and it power cycled again. It started happening with increased frequency the longer I played so that I couldnt play 10min without it cycling.

So I connected my old 1080p monitor and played two entire warzone games without problem. The new Dell monitor was on in the backround and connected with the displayport and gave no issues as the game was output on the 1080p monitor.

The event viewer showed no clear indication of an error occuring in the Dell monitor, but when I connected the 1080p monitor I saw the Dell refresh rate was set to 60Hz again and not 144hz/165hz as it was before the power cycle. Can it be that the power cycling is causing the change in refresh rate?

 

[Ralston18]

Event viewer will not necessarily show a problem with the Dell monitor. Event Viewer (and Reliability History) may show some consequence of a problem peripheral with errors such as "lost connection" or "not connected".

For the record: how old is that 650 watt PSU? Make and model?

==========

Reading back I noticed that you mentioned the Radeon drivers. [Leave all others as is - too many variables/changes only complicate troubleshooting and could make things worse...]

However, consider installing the Dell Monitor drivers for your S2721dgf monitor.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=24phn

Dell: "This package contains the Dell S2721DGF Monitor driver. The monitor driver enables the monitor to communicate with the operating system by supplying configuration information in the form of an INF file. The operating system uses this file to apply features and settings. "

Do verify that the above link is applicable to your monitor.

Manually download, install, configure for your system

Then try your described tests again and do so as methodically as possible. Change only one thing at a time.

And continue to watch the frequency changes and work to determine when that change occurs.

 

[barendlouw]

The PSU is a Gamdias Kratos 80plus gold, and I bought it new out of the box on Friday (19 Feb).

I went to the Dell link you sent, that is indeed my monitor. I installed the drivers and they said I have one driver that needs installing and 3 already installed. I am going to try seeing if it will power cycle again, under load or just when the PC is idle and get back to you. Thank you so much for your help.

 

[barendlouw]

Update :

Was playing Warzone now for a full 2 games on the Dell monitor, but then in the third game same problem happened...to both the monitors connected. Had to disconnect them both and reconnect them. Warzone crashed because "there was no display found to output video". Once again nothing to see in the Event Viewer or Reliability History to help. What would be the next step to troubleshoot this?