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What makes mac monitors randomly black out?
Posting for a co-worker, hopefully stats to follow.
His situation is a 4-core Intel Xeon 3.3ghz, 16 GB ram 1066mhz DDR3, mac pro tower, brand new, two cinema displays and an AJA HD IO box for the I/O. He’s running OS 10.6.8 and FCS3.
His cinema displays turn black randomly. The power indicator LED on the cinema display stays lit but the screens go black and it takes a full restart to bring them back.
This happens randomly, whether he’s working or not. He’s checked his power saver and sleep and screen saver settings and finds nothing amiss.
He swapped the power bricks for the displays with those in another suite, and no change, the blackouts still happen.
This happens when FCS3 is not even active, such as when only browsing online. Totally random, not tied to any specific app.
What do you suggest?
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4 Replies
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He exchanged the power bricks when I was thinking he needed to exchange the displays if he wanted to rule something out. With the power light on, it wasn’t the bricks. Either the displays or the graphics card. Since it seems to be happening to both displays, I’d guess the graphics card. Pretty slim odds of both displays crapping out the same way. So swap out the displays, or the graphics cards. Whichever is easier. Perhaps they’re overheating?
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Thanks for a quick and logical response. We’ll try a monitor swap tomorrow or Monday and report back.
I thought mac pro towers were well set-up to prevent over-heating. His tower site unobstructed with clear air flow access. But maybe it is a bad board. Or fans not working? We’ll check for that too.
Any other ideas? Some funkiness caused by the HDiO, perhaps?
I run an older octo-core tower and it never seems to have any problems.
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Hi Mark,
I have the same issue with my MBP attached to a DELL-24.
I haven’t tried to dig in but I guess thats related to the fact that the new MBPs have TWO video cards.
No idea if others Intel Macs works the same.
I’ve unchecked the automatic “graphic cards switcher”.
I’ll let you know if the glitch disappear.
rafael -
Hi mark,
I’ve unchecked the “automatic graphic cards switcher”, and so far not a single black.
rafael
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