[SOLVED] No signal with 2-3 monitor set up. Black screens on bootup and when changing game resolutions.

Juu Nii

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Jan 9, 2016
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Hello!

I recently got a new monitor, which is the Acer 27" Nitro VG270UP (2560 x 1440 @144hz). I've been using a dual monitor setup before this fine with my Acer 24" Predator GN246HL (1920x1080 @144hz and some old Samsung 21" TV (1920x1080 @60Hz).

Now, specs:
GPU: Asus ROG Strix RX480
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
RAM: 16Gb 3200MHz
Mobo: Asus ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING
PSU: Corsair RM750x

So first I had the fine idea (ofc) of making my setup a 3 monitor. Plugged them all in:
-Acer 27" Nitro with Display Port in the middle of my setup
-Acer 24" Predator with Dual link DVI to the left of my Nitro
-Samsung TV with HDMI to the right of my Nitro

Ok. No problems so far. All resolutions and refresh rates are up where they should be.

Now. Let's get to the fun part. Gaming. I launch Ready or not and yeah boots up fine and even properly on the monitor set as the main monitor, which is the Acer Nitro. Now during the game session I went to check if the game was running on fullscreen or fullscreen windowed. And I changed it in to fullscreen. This is where all the problems started and I've been trying to troubleshoot this for 2 days now. During the fullscreen change, the game went to my Samsung TV and my main monitor went black screen. I instantly went to check windows monitor settings and the main monitor was set as "Disconnect this monitor". Tried setting it back to "Extend this monitor". Pressed confirm and oh. Changed back to "Disconnect". Well, what about duplicate this display. Well, that works, I got picture. Try setting back to extend and now it works again. But game is still on wrong monitor. This I managed to fix by using Shift+Win+Left arrow. Okay. Game session ended. I felt a little worried that is this the life I get again for wanting to upgrade.

Okay. Fast forward to couple hours later. Turns out, after restarting my computer either the Nitro has a black screen or the other 2 screens have a black screen. So I figured through googling a little that my GPU can support only 2 "clock generators" or whatever. So I ditch the Samsung TV in favor of the higher refresh rate of the predator. Now we have 2 monitors left with only 1 DP and 1 DVI cable. After restart, Nitro was getting a signal, predator not. So I treid doing the "Extend this monitor" thing again. Reverted back instantly even though I confirmed it. Duplicating works and after that so does extend. So I tried switching the DVI to HDMI and did another restart. Nothing on the predator still. And again going through the same duplicate and then extend loop it starts working. At this point I started to get a little frustrated and uninstalled all inactive monitors from my device manager and also uninstalled my AMD drivers with DDU in safe mode and reinstalled them. Restart after installation. STILL NOTHING.

All games, if I touch the settings to change my resolution to the one I want jump straight to the predator screen and this blacks out my main monitor by setting it to "Disconnect this monitor" in windows for some reason. And it is almost impossible to get the game back to the main screen after this has happened. At this point I'm pretty desperate for answers and I can't find a similar issue anywhere on google. It seems like my GPU wants to prefer the predator over the nitro and is looking for the samsung TV to go with it completely disregarding the Nitro. And yeah, I've tried my previous setup of the Predator and Samsung and it works as it should. It even remembered my desktop icon setup.

Also, I will be getting a new GPU in a few weeks, so if it's a GPU issue there's no worries on that part.

Hope someone understands even a little bit of this novel I wrote up.
 
Solution
UPDATE 3:
Disabled HDR from the new monitor in it's settings and in windows. By miracle my second monitor instantly started up. This might be the fix.

Juu Nii

Honorable
Jan 9, 2016
57
0
10,540
UPDATE:
I realized I haven't tried HDMI to the Acer Nitro yet so I thought what's the worst that could happen? I popped the DP out and in with the HDMI. Did a few tests on a few games, and so far it works as intended. Other monitor gets a signal too with DVI.

Then I read somewhere that FreeSync can mess with DP, so I disabled it on the monitor and also in the AMD software. That didn't work out.

This is kinda bad because in the GPU I'm getting there are 3 DP ports and 1 HDMI. And the predator monitor only has VGA, DVI, and HDMI. So, I kind of need the HDMI port for the predator monitor.

So, I'm still looking for answers to the problem, that now seems to be related to Display Port
 
Last edited:

Juu Nii

Honorable
Jan 9, 2016
57
0
10,540
UPDATE 2:
Was gaming and ran into some issues with resolutions. Changed resolution to native. (1440p in this case) And my main monitor went back to being "Disconnect this monitor". Other one stayed fine. Took over the game and desktop etc.
 

Juu Nii

Honorable
Jan 9, 2016
57
0
10,540
UPDATE 3:
Disabled HDR from the new monitor in it's settings and in windows. By miracle my second monitor instantly started up. This might be the fix.
 
Solution