Question Is my monitor or GPU dying?

[The_Haxor]

I have a BenQ Zowie XL2546K, I've had it for a bit less than 4 years and lately I started noticing some faint horizontal stripes on the bottom 40% of the monitor in ALL apps/games, faint enough to be really hard to get on a photo. I randomly decided to go from 240Hz to 60Hz and to my surprise it made the problem much, much more noticeable, as you can see in the image below. What could this be?

At 144 Hz there's a white line perfectly splitting the good area from the distorted part

Unfortunately, I don't have another monitor to test or another PC right now.

 

[jojesa]

Make sure the refresh rate on the monitor matches the refresh rate on the OS.
Reset your monitor to default and set both, the monitor and the OS to 120Hz.

 

[The_Haxor]

Make sure the refresh rate on the monitor matches the refresh rate on the OS.
Reset your monitor to default and set both, the monitor and the OS to 120Hz.

I'm guessing by OS you mean the display adapter properties, I don't know about any other place where I can change the refresh rate. I don't see any options for that in the monitor's menu (the five buttons it has).

I just reset the monitor on said menu but nothing changed (besides for the awful colors that Zowie has by default), the stripes are still there on 240 Hz and it looks horrible on any other refresh rate.

 

[jojesa]

I'm guessing by OS you mean the display adapter properties,

Yes, shown on the image you posted and on the Nvidia Control Panel.

I don't know about any other place where I can change the refresh rate. I don't see any options for that in the monitor's menu (the five buttons it has).

On the monitor you could use the 5 button controller to select or change the default settings.
Bring up the Quick Menu and select Menu to access the main menu with all options available.

Also make sure to check your display cable, since they could come loose and also could fail.
I had similar problems within 4 month of having a 4K Dell Curved 34" 144Hz monitor. The included cheap DP cable failed within 4 months. At first, I thought is was the monitor or the GPU but a $10 Cable Matters DP cable fixed the issue.

 

[The_Haxor]

Yes, shown on the image you posted and on the Nvidia Control Panel.

On the monitor you could use the 5 button controller to select or change the default settings.
Bring up the Quick Menu and select Menu to access the main menu with all options available.

Also make sure to check your display cable, since they could come loose and also could fail.
I had similar problems within 4 month of having a 4K Dell Curved 34" 144Hz monitor. The included cheap DP cable failed within 4 months. At first, I thought is was the monitor or the GPU but a $10 Cable Matters DP cable fixed the issue.

I reset the monitor's settings to default but the issue didn't improve. There's nowhere in the menu where I can find a way to change the refresh rate, but there's a part that displays current res and refresh rate, and it always matches the Windows refresh rate.

Will try another cable in the coming days.

 

[jojesa]

Have you tried the custom settings on the monitor?

 

[The_Haxor]

Have you tried the custom settings on the monitor?

If you're not referring to just using changing stuff through this menu

then I don't know what you mean by that, but you cannot change the refresh rate here.

 

[jojesa]

I think you have the the BenQ Zowie XL2546.
The BenQ Zowie XL2546K has different options.

If you change the refresh rate to 144Hz on Windows, does it change on the monitor?

 

[The_Haxor]

I think you have the the BenQ Zowie XL2546.
The BenQ Zowie XL2546K has different options.

If you change the refresh rate to 144Hz on Windows, does it change on the monitor?

Oops, yeah, you're right. I have the non K version.

When I change to 144 Hz the "Current resolution" in the menu just changes to 1920x1080@144 as well.

Also, the awful distortion doesn't happen on 120 Hz or 144 Hz all of a sudden now, but it's still there in 60 Hz and there are still faint horizontal lines at 240 Hz.

I'll test a different cable and ports tomorrow and a different monitor this weekend. I don't have another PC but I doubt my PC is the issue here.

 

[jojesa]

The non K version does not have the option to change refresh rate on the monitor.
When the refresh rate is changed on the computer it changes on the monitor.

I will leave it at 144Hz, if it is working fine.

By the way, you might not be able to tell the difference between 144Hz and higher refresh rate.