Question Monitor goes black when starting games ?

[quacks-]

Hello! I recently got a BenQ Zowie XL2746K, and the 240hz is very nice, but when starting games, the monitor goes black and I am forced to press the power button off and then on on the back of the monitor for it to work again. This happens when alt-tabbing into some games, but always when they start up, and it is very frustrating.
My main monitor (240HZ) goes black, but my other one (144HZ) does not.
https://youtube.com/shorts/cxjdqq4EpD0?feature=share
this is it happening, I don't know how to make it not a short, so sorry about that.

I have tried updating monitor firmware, GPU drivers with DDU, and drivers for the monitor.
Also, when changing graphics settings on my NVIDIA control panel, the computer beeps once, as well as when pressing CTRL + Windows + Shift + B.
Any help is appreciated, I've never experienced this before!

CPU: Ryzen 9 5900X
Motherboard: x570-Pro Prime AMD AM4
Ram: 2x Vengeance RGB Pro 32GB DDR4-3600
SSD/HDD: 870 QVO Samsung
GPU: RTX3080ti
PSU: Corsair RM850W
OS: Windows 11


Update: I've tried changing cables and unplugging my second monitor, and nothing changed. It seemed to let me start games a few times without it happening, but eventually when starting F1 2020 the screen flashed, became incredibly dim, then went black, and made me turn it off and on again for it to work.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums and a Happy New Year, newcomer!

Motherboard: x570-Pro Prime AMD AM4
Can you check and see what your current motherboard BIOS is at this moment of time?

PSU: Corsair RM850W
How old is the PSU in your build?

As for your panel's issue, have you tried working with only the BenQ Zowie panel, not in a dual monitor setup? Speaking of which if the BenQ Zowie is the primary panel, what is your secondary panel and how is it connected to the system?

became incredibly dim, then went black, and made me turn it off and on again for it to work.
Just for the sake of security, I'd definitely suggest wrapping both your seller and BenQ's support team and run it by them as well. Seems to me like you need to RMA the panel, if cables, drivers and calibration don't solve anything. Did you try and plug the panel to a known working donor system to rule out the panel being the root cause of the issue?

 

[quacks-]

Welcome to the forums and a Happy New Year, newcomer!

Motherboard: x570-Pro Prime AMD AM4
Can you check and see what your current motherboard BIOS is at this moment of time?

PSU: Corsair RM850W
How old is the PSU in your build?

As for your panel's issue, have you tried working with only the BenQ Zowie panel, not in a dual monitor setup? Speaking of which if the BenQ Zowie is the primary panel, what is your secondary panel and how is it connected to the system?

became incredibly dim, then went black, and made me turn it off and on again for it to work.
Just for the sake of security, I'd definitely suggest wrapping both your seller and BenQ's support team and run it by them as well. Seems to me like you need to RMA the panel, if cables, drivers and calibration don't solve anything. Did you try and plug the panel to a known working donor system to rule out the panel being the root cause of the issue?

Thanks for the quick response, Lutfij!

The x570 I just updated, it is on version 4408.

The PSU is 5-6 months old now. The PC is relatively new.

I've tried changing cables and unplugging my second monitor, and nothing changed. It seemed to let me start games a few times without it happening, but eventually when starting F1 2020 the screen flashed, became incredibly dim, then went black, and made me turn it off and on again for it to work. Same for other games.

If nothing else works, I will RMA the monitor. I can still use it in games, but it is becoming annoying having to turn the monitor on and off each time. It goes black when I start the game, but I can turn it off then on and then click on the game which will reopen it in full screen, then allow me to play (and also that time, when I start it, it says input: DisplayPort on the monitor. my acer, when starting fullscreen games, will say input: DisplayPort (and not black screen). however, this only happens on the BenQ after I turn it off and on then click on the game.)

The other monitor is a acer xb271h, and is also displayport. I tried setting it as my primary, and if I start a game on it both monitors stay on. However, if my primary monitor is the BenQ, and I start a game on it, it goes black while the Acer stays on.

 

[anik027]

I don't know, will this work for you or not. I also got an Nvidia GPU, but not the same model. Was having kind of a same issue with apex, ms flight sim like demanding games, but not at the start-up, for apex at the lobby, for flight sim after first loading gets to 50-60%. Here is what I did, uninstalled GPU driver with DDU including physx, Install latest driver again via Windows update (didn't work). Then uninstalled driver again with ddu, downloaded an older version nvidia site of October 16th, before that I also set Windows update to manual from services, this option is also available in ddu settings. Since this time, my another intention was to see what actually is happening, so I change the resolution of apex to 1366*768 with windows mode. This time it worked, no more black screen issue. But i don't know what actually fixed it! Maybe changing the resolution and graphics settings, or maybe going back to an older driver. You should try with the graphics setting first, then try graphics driver rollback, also after rollback change the resolution with windows mode before starting the game for safety.

 

[quacks-]

I don't know, will this work for you or not. I also got an Nvidia GPU, but not the same model. Was having kind of a same issue with apex, ms flight sim like demanding games, but not at the start-up, for apex at the lobby, for flight sim after first loading gets to 50-60%. Here is what I did, uninstalled GPU driver with DDU including physx, Install latest driver again via Windows update (didn't work). Then uninstalled driver again with ddu, downloaded an older version nvidia site of October 16th, before that I also set Windows update to manual from services, this option is also available in ddu settings. Since this time, my another intention was to see what actually is happening, so I change the resolution of apex to 1366*768 with windows mode. This time it worked, no more black screen issue. But i don't know what actually fixed it! Maybe changing the resolution and graphics settings, or maybe going back to an older driver. You should try with the graphics setting first, then try graphics driver rollback.

So are you playing on a lower resolution? Or did you just change it to a lower resolution then back?

 

[anik027]

So are you playing on a lower resolution? Or did you just change it to a lower resolution then back?

No, I got back to my normal settings, still working fine.

And I forgot to tell while installing the older game ready driver, I selected custom installation, from there checked clean installation.

 

[quacks-]

To add on, this is how dim it gets when it starts to have issues. This started happening on boot randomly too, the screen goes extremely dim. Happened in safe mode as well when trying to do DDU. This is the exact issue that happens when I start games like F1 2020.
However, if I turn the monitor on and off again, or in the case of F1 2020, alt tab out and into the game when it does it, the game goes back into full color, and the monitor isn't super dim anymore. Is this a dying backlight? Should I just RMA? I tried older drivers to no avail.