I've got 2 syncmaster 204B's, made in China (one in Jan. 2007 and the other June 2006), with the now-well-known flickering issue. A workaround that works *most* of the time is the program Powerstrip, which can change the refresh rate in very small increments. However, while it works nearly flawlessly most of the time, it doesn't always work while running a game @ 1600x1200. I just found this site that suggests it's probably bad capacitors causing the issue, and shows (sort of) how to replace them:
http://pavel.kirkovsky.com/2009/03/s...r-204b-repair/
Anyone want to take a look and give me a second opinion?
Specifically, the flicker problem happens only at 1600x1200, and is often accompanied by white "snow" all over the picture. The picture will show for a few seconds, then disappear, then come back sometimes for a few seconds, and sometimes for a fraction of a second before disappearing again. It happens frequently enough that without powerstrip, the computer is unuseable. Oddly, under XP and Vista only the primary screen exhibited the flicker. If I changed the other screen to be primary, then *it* exhibited the flicker. Now under Win7, the secondary does it more often, but they both do it; the primary does it often while gaming. The easy fix is to run games at 1280x1024, but I'd much prefer to run them full res.
I guess really what I'm after is, does that sound like it could be caused by faulty capacitors? As long as I can get the bad ones out of there, I have no issue putting in new ones...it'd be awesome if I could fix these screens for $10 or so. Especially considering I don't have $$ for new ones, and I love the picture quality on them. Thanks!