Solved LG TV conn'd to AMD Mini PC is blinking/crackling

The Pool Man said:

Do I install the Chipset one too

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If the driver is newer it's worth a try. Now that you have the drivers you should be able to direct Device Manager to the folder with the drivers for each device you want to update. If the downloaded drivers are older or the same, Device Manager will say you already have the best driver installed. If any updated drivers cause's any problem you can roll back to an older driver. I have a Beelink connect to my TV using the HDMI port but I only use it when I need access to the desktop. The Beelink is running Mezzmo to stream my content to all of my devices so I rarely have need to access the desktop. On another thought and you may have mention it. Did this start happenen around the time of any Windows updates?

Load AMD control panel and find the monitor section. Make sure the resolution is the maximum possible for your TV (such as 1920x1080 if it is full HD or 3840x2160 if it is 4K) and the refresh rate is 60Hz rather than 59Hz or whatever. See if this fixes the flicker. Also try 4096x2160 as some 4K TVs have that native resolution instead of 3840x2160. The important factor is the refresh rate being exactly 60Hz or 50Hz. Also make sure the HDMI cable us at least version 1.4 or 2.0 and also try a different HDMI input on the TV.

PS: Just a thought... If you see flicker in games or movies you may have to enable vertical sync from gaming settings. I have seen a crystal clear image on my friend's 4K TV but the image was slightly "broken" (I cannot describe it properly) near the middle where the bottom half did not exactly align with the upper half resulting in the image flickering. This is a sign of bad vertical sync. That means the GPU is trying to draw the image faster than the monitor can handle and the latter cannot keep up. The fix is to enable vertical sync. Maybe that's your case too.

Winuser said:

If the driver is newer it's worth a try.

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So I have. And I'm officially now stating it doesn't matter what drivers I have because I've tried'em all.

The flickering can come and go, which concerns me that it's hardware related. When I have a spare minute I'm going to connect a new monitor to the Beelink, and if it flickers -- I know the culprit. Because my wife's Vivobook to the LG worked fine.

The Pool Man said:

So I have. And I'm officially now stating it doesn't matter what drivers I have because I've tried'em all.

The flickering can come and go, which concerns me that it's hardware related. When I have a spare minute I'm going to connect a new monitor to the Beelink, and if it flickers -- I know the culprit. Because my wife's Vivobook to the LG worked fine.

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I hope you can find a solution that doesn't make you spend money on new hardware unless you're in the market to upgrade to newer hardware. I just had to replace my old and very faithful Pioneer disk drive because the laser was getting weak and it had problems reading my disk. I have been over working it ever since I decided to stream all of my media with Mezzo instead of just watching it from my DVD-Blu-ray players. As a bonus I have save a lot of shelf space by being able to toss the cases. I'm keeping the DVDs in Storage books and they hold a lot of DVDs in a very small space. I'm almost ready to donate to Goodwill one of my DVD storage cabinets.

Have you tried yet to enable vertical sync in graphics control panel? This could fix your issue.

Winuser said:

I hope you can find a solution that doesn't make you spend money on new hardware

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What sucks is I spent $475 on this two years ago. (Back then it was a deal.) (I also applied $78 of Amazon rewards points.) Now I can get the same exact unit (in clearance) for $260 with a site coupon and no rewards. My problem is double downing on a unit that I believe has likely failed. And possibly a questionable brand.

I always buy extended warranty on PCs but I figured if something went wrong after year three -- who cares? In three years that's $158 which ain't bad. But it's only been two years and that's $237 a year. Ahem.

I still have to verify it's the unit and not other settings.

Enable vertical sync before giving up.

spapakons said:

Enable vertical sync before giving up.

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I hear you. I'm just taking breaks between fixing attempts.

spapakons said:

Have you tried yet to enable vertical sync in graphics control panel? This could fix your issue.

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By the way, the reason I didn't rush to this advice is you pressented a possible profile that I didn't fit. You said, "Just a thought... If you see flicker in games or movies you may have to enable vertical sync from gaming settings. I have seen a crystal clear image on my friend's 4K TV but the image was slightly "broken" (I cannot describe it properly) near the middle where the bottom half did not exactly align with the upper half resulting in the image flickering."

I don't game. It's not just in movies but always. The image is fine but I will offer that the bottom quarter of the screen FLICKERS white momentarily.

Thanks to you and all for your help attempts here, they're not going unappreciated.

Regarding the AMD Control Panel -- I don't have one. I used to but then it upgraded to Adrenaline which caused problems on this system.

HARDWARE TESTING UPDATE FOR ANY AND ALL WHO ARE WATCHING --

I hooked up an LCD monitor from my office directly to this Beelink in the living room. Not ONE blink or flicker or BLACKING OUT so far. I even have the monitor using the same HDMI cable and all in the same power surge plug strip. So knowing this --

-- I see three options left

1. Something like what SPAP is talking about: the 'relationship' between the Beelink and the LG OLED TV, what someone in a different forum called 'the handshake' in that it is struggling to keep a proper bond between, or --

2. -- the LG TV itself is on the blink. I ruled this out eariler by simply watching the TV and it never blinked once

3. The Beelink board is mildly broken. That sounds reasonable until you realize I'm using this LCD monitor to type this entire message and there's no flickering what so ever over at least 10 minutes.

spapakons said:

Enable vertical sync before giving up.

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Now I'll explain why I take breaks between fix attempts.

You suggested I address vertical sync via the AMD Graphics Control panel. I (believe) I do not have any AMD software on board except for drivers. But to give your fix a try (why not?) I installed it and immediately got slew of these warnings --



So I as quickly uninstalled that software and I'm back at the crossroads. When I did that it took out the 2021 driver and installed the this August driver from 2023. So far no flickering but I've learned that means nuthin'.

Flickering, of course, is back. In case this matters: using the same driver, no flickering in SAFE MODE (which I think rules out the TV again)

AMD RyzenMaster software is to Tweak the CPU and overclock. I was talking about the AMD graphics control panel (aka Catalyst Control Panel) which is different. Uninstall RyzenMaster, you don't need it.

So I got desperate and tried something nutty. It was along the idea of safe mode, the notion that perhaps a piece of software I was using was somehow interfering with the monitor. This theory doesn't quite make sense because I had just tried a different monitor already, but perhaps there's something about OLEDs that are different than LED/IPS monitors.

I've been using a few third party 'little' tiny programs for years. Not to many but --

1. GREENSHOT is someone's superior answer to SNIPPING TOOL. However, on the LG set, whenever I take a snapshot the current screen config fails and it gets all BRIGHT all of a sudden while taking the snapshot. A 'buggy' behavior that ONLY happens on the OLED. That program hasn't been updated in ages. So I turned it off.

2. WINXCORNERS is someone's superior answer to TASK VIEW. It forces either all windows into view or makes them all disappear simply by sticking your pointer into desired corners. (TASK VIEW, like SNIPPING TOOL, like Windows itself -- forces additional clicks.) This app is also ancient and it's also now turned off. (It's suspect because how it so quickly manipulates the screen appearance.)

3. AUTOHIDEDESKTOP ICONS is a great way to hide the garbage on your desktop automatically. Everything just 'disappears' behind a layer after a few seconds. The thing is that layering my be confusing the screen as well. So it's now turned off.

I've had hours upon hours of flickerfree bliss. I'm in no mood to find out which one it was, if any. But later today I might turn one back on, lol.

You can also right-click on the desktop and select Hide all icons and Show all icons respectively. To minimize and restore all windows at once click on the right edge of the taskbar. In Windows 7 there was a visible button there but in Windows 11 is not easy to see.

So I don't want to jinx myself but I think I found the culprit. As I suspected, the flickering appears to be hardware related. Indications of such include --

1. An otherwise fine little Mini PC was suddenly on the blink, literally.
2. Software fixes (reinstalling the OS, turning off certain older softwares) would fix... then unfix themselves.
3. The flickering wasn't consistent. Sometimes it would go away for hours, but other times come back.

I had already tried unplugging everything, waiting a few minutes, plugging it back in. But the flickering came back. And then I noticed something too stupid to be true. See this quality plug strip --



When I first unplugged that strip from the wall I also unplugged everything plugged into it. Full paranoia. That was a few days ago. Today I decided to try again, and I noticed this --



Do you see in the first picture how you basically can't see it? In my dim living room it was as invisible. But today I noticed it and pulled the plug strip closer... only to learn... it appeared to be the littlest bit loose. This is the LG TV's plug.

This confuses me because previously I had already tested the set itself, which I almost never watch as a TV. For an hour or so it played perfectly with no flickering. So I had ruled the set out.

But maybe when the PC tried to work with the TV there wasn't enough juice for the TV somehow?

Not throwing myself a victory parade yet but a loose plug is a loose plug.

You'd not get "partial voltage" from a loose plug, you'd get intermittent power if anything and the TV would shut off once it lost power

A Guy

Unstable power can cause strange glitches on TVs. In my main PC (2nd system specs), I use a Sony 19" TV as the primary monitor. In a couple of rare occasions the TV screen went all white and no button on the remote or on the set could fix it. It was like brain dead. The fix was to unplug it for a few seconds. Upon connecting the plug again it came back to life. It still works perfectly, knock on wood.

Again, not a line power issue. The TV has a power supply that takes the AC input and puts out regulated run voltages (5v, 9v, 13v, etc.). If the power supply received enough power to run the output voltages don't change as they are regulated. A 115v system TV will run at around 90v input (varies) and still put out the correct regulated DC voltages. Lower input AC voltage and it will just shut off

Something like a white screen could be the TCON board or main board. Power cycling it (unplug/replug) just resets those boards. One could have a power supply issue, but that is different than incoming AC power

TV tech almost 40 years

A Guy

A Guy said:

Again, not a line power issue. The TV has a power supply that takes the AC input and puts out regulated run voltages (5v, 9v, 13v, etc.). If the power supply received enough power to run the output voltages don't change as they are regulated. A 115v system TV will run at around 90v input (varies) and still put out the correct regulated DC voltages. Lower input AC voltage and it will just shut off

Something like a white screen could be the TCON board or main board. Power cycling it (unplug/replug) just resets those boards. One could have a power supply issue, but that is different than incoming AC power

TV tech almost 40 years

A Guy

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Thanks. I'm listening. I'm coming to the conclusion my situation is two issues that are so similar I've perceived them as one.

1. When I first boot up, sometimes, the screen goes thru this series of blackouts. Like you're looking at this very page and suddenly the TV goes black for a second or two and then comes back, a tad brighter. This has only happened in PC mode (HDMI 1) but never when watching the TV, right?

2. A portion of the TV screen flickers WHITE in the blink of an eye, often with an audible 'spark' sound. It's not always the same part of the screen that does this but is typically some portion of the lower half of the screen.

I am convinced I've fixed the 2nd problem. I've been spark/flicker free for over a day. However I'm not convinced #1 is gone.

... and the blinking is back. (Cause it never went away...)

I have a new Beelink Mini on its way tomorrow. (I wanted to upgrade my office PC but this may upgrade the TV one. Who knows.

I'll keep y'all posted

Are you changing to the TV after the PC is already on? If the TV is on when you boot the PC, it can be hard for the TV to lock on to the resolution

Also the wrong cable can cause issues. Make sure it's a quality HDMI 2.1 cable. Monoprice usually has good prices. I also saw (retired a few years now) using the ARC/eARC port can sometimes cause issues. Settings in the video card in the PC can also affect things (VRR, G-SYNC)

A Guy