Question Horizontal "waves" on LCD monitor, most noticeable during gaming ?

[Archon of the Valley]

Hi, I've come across a big issue that my monitor is encountering right now.

Right after Christmas, I switched out my previous monitor for a different one, as my old one seemed to be on its way out. The one I switched to was a spare used monitor a family member had. At first, it was fine; aside from a few small chips and a tiny spot on the backlight that shines brighter than the rest, it's fully functional until I can save to buy myself a new one.

However, the other day, I had to open my case to diagnose a loud fan. While I was in there, I took the time to fully unplug everything, dust it out and ensure everything was still seated properly. I plug the system back in and try to game, then boom: horizontal "wave" lines that move around while gaming that look like parts of the backlight are shining brighter than they should be. My old monitor did this as well.

After some research online, I'm fairly certain that it's because both this monitor and my old one are older and lack HDMI ports, thus I'm forced to use a VGA-to-HDMI adapter to plug into my GPU. I saw suggestions to just switch direct to HDMI, but that doesn't help me right now, as these monitors don't have that port.

However, before I throw ~$100 that I don't have out the window, I'd like to get some thoughts from this forum in case it could possibly be something else I didn't try.

Here's what I've tried so far:

• I started by testing the screenshot vs. phone camera trick. It shows up on the phone camera but not the screenshot
• I tried fully unplugging everything, double-checking the seating and even holding the power button for a bit to discharge any remaining power in the PSU
• I tried switching outlets
• I tried looking through the BIOS to see if anything stuck out as an issue
• I checked display settings, I'm set to the peak of this monitor's refresh rate (60Hz)
• I've tried various different games, some have the issue worse than others (though oddly, in some games like Starfield, hitting esc to pause the game almost completely removes the lines)

What I haven't tried:

• I haven't installed the latest drivers but only because I'm only two releases behind and the two releases since my driver version are for features mostly dedicated to new games and the RTX 4x line
• I haven't run DDU yet, I'd rather avoid that if I can as it's a real pain in the backside

It's definitely not GPU artifacting; I've seen what that looks like. Everything I've seen points to the fact that I'm running a modern GPU via a VGA adapter, but again, I just want to be sure before I dish out the cash since I have to be careful with the money right now as it is. It's just baffling to me that I didn't have this issue at all until the other day, it's like I moved something wrong but I can't think of anything I did differently.

Thanks in advance if you guys have any suggestions that I can try before buying a new monitor.

PS: Not that they're likely to help in this case, but here are the system's specs...

Spoiler: Specs

• MONITOR: Planar PLL2410W
• MOBO: ASUS Prime B450M-A II
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
• RAM: 2x8GB
• GPU: Gigabyte RTX 3070

 

[MJS WARLORD]

You say you have the same problem on 2 monitors so the problem would seem to be elsewhere.
when i got my first pc some 20 years ago my local store fitted me a better graphics card but they did not check the power it required , the power supply in the pc was not good enough for the card and i got the wavy lines you describe.

You say it only happens in games so that could be a clue to your card not getting enough power.

If you use steam games go into the settings and turn on fps counter so that you can see what fps your getting during a game session.

 

[Archon of the Valley]

You say you have the same problem on 2 monitors so the problem would seem to be elsewhere.
when i got my first pc some 20 years ago my local store fitted me a better graphics card but they did not check the power it required , the power supply in the pc was not good enough for the card and i got the wavy lines you describe.

You say it only happens in games so that could be a clue to your card not getting enough power.

If you use steam games go into the settings and turn on fps counter so that you can see what fps your getting during a game session.

Well, the issue was sporadic on the old monitor. It was nonexistent on this one until I did my long overdue routine maintenance. The reason I suspect it's the VGA/HDMI issue is because neither monitor has an HDMI port so I've been using the adapter for both.

That said, when it comes to games, I get really solid performance. Anything that doesn't use ray tracing is usually 60+ FPS (excluding the aforementioned Starfield, which has spotty performance in general). This is a 750w PSU so it should be enough to handle my specs. How would I check to ensure it's getting enough power? I've looked through my BIOS (going to add that to the "things I've done" section after this post) but I'm not sure specifically where to look.

Anyways, thanks for the response!

 

[MJS WARLORD]

Google your graphics card and it should tell you how much power it needs but i would say that unless you have one of the latest high end cards then a 750w psu should be more than enough

 

[Archon of the Valley]

Google your graphics card and it should tell you how much power it needs but i would say that unless you have one of the latest high end cards then a 750w psu should be more than enough

Yep, just searched for it, the recommendation seems to be a 650w PSU at least. I figured it up, the RTX 3070 needs ~200-220w and the Ryzen 5 5600G needs ~88w at full power.

Even so, how would I check to be sure everything's getting the right amount of power?

EDIT: I also just noticed that there is a VERY faint, soft flickering even when I'm not gaming, but it's only visible when I have a dark web page or program open.

 

[MJS WARLORD]

i dont know how to find out if everything is getting enough power

 

[Archon of the Valley]

No worries, I appreciate the input either way. I did notice the issue is slightly less problematic after I installed the newest Nvidia driver and I also messed with the HDMI adapter a bit. It's still a noticeable problem but slightly less so now.