Monitor Crackling

[Mr. Pedantic]

It's a 19" Philips LCD. It's nearly 5 years old now. Basically what happens is whenever the power cable is plugged in the monitor starts crackling, and you can smell ozone coming out of the grille at the top.

The monitor had this problem before, but it was intermittent and usually just wiggling the cable a bit would sort it out, but now no amount of wiggling will make the crackling go away. This last happened about 5 months previously, and for about 2 months it worked perfectly fine. About 3 months ago we started some house renovations that involved moving this monitor (my secondary) into storage for a bit while the rest of the house was worked on; basically taking out a couple of walls, adding a new room, and gib-stopping and repainting.

I've tried using different cables, using the cables on the primary monitor (a newer 22" LCD) and wiggling the cable around (as I said, it used to work, but doesn't anymore). It can still display images fine, but I'm afraid that if I use it it'll only be a matter of time before it borks completely. Is there a solution to this problem, or should I just scrap this monitor and maybe get a new one?

 

[pawstar]

I would be worried there. If you smell ozone, that could mean arcing from the high voltage power supply - loose backlight connection, crack on circuit board, etc. Could be a fire hazard.

 

[SJetski71]

Agreed, possible fire hazard. Certainly not worth it for an old 19" monitor that's payed for itself a few times over by now.

The good news is that monitor prices have dropped tremendously since 5 years ago.

A current good price/performance/quality candidate is the 23" NEC EA231wmi E-IPS monitor, or the 22" Dell 2209WA E-IPS which can be had for less than $230 shipped if you speak to the right Dell representative.