There are various reasons that this annoying situation can happen when you are playing a game. Losing your progress or having your avatar die because the monitor chose to turn off can be very frustrating. If you are not sure how to troubleshoot this problem, you need to know why this might have taken place. This is not necessarily a common issue for gamers, but it can happen and often makes itself known at the worst times.
There are several reasons why a monitor may turn off when playing games, including overheating, graphics driver issues, or an insufficient power supply. In some cases, the monitor may be going into a power-saving mode due to inactivity or a screensaver setting. It’s important to troubleshoot the issue by checking the monitor’s settings, updating drivers, and ensuring adequate cooling and power supply for the system.
Reasons That Your Monitor Might Turn off When Playing a Game
The most common reason for monitor shut off when you are gaming is that there has been a power bump. The duration of this change in voltage can either make your screen shut off and come right back on, or it could cause it to shut off and stay shut off. It might also make your PC restart.
Barring voltage issues, loose connections between the tower and the monitor can cause this problem, as well as failing cables between the two parts of your computer. You will want to try replugging both ends of a VGA or HDMI cable to see if this is the cause of your monitor performance issues. You can also replace the cord if you think that it is failing. Ordering these kinds of cables is easy if you don’t have a spare on hand to swap out.
If your tower is getting really hot when you are playing, you will need to make sure that it is kept cool with a quality internal fan as well as an external fan. This can help with aberrant shut-offs of your monitor, as the graphics card might be getting too hot to function properly and send a signal to the monitor. This is more common when you need to upgrade a gaming machine and have not yet done so, but it can happen if you are playing games with very high-quality graphics for a prolonged period of time.
The last reason that this might be happening is that your graphics card is just not up to sending the signals to your monitors, and there is a problem with the tower related to this that causes the shutdown. You will potentially need to explore the settings that are needed for your favorite games and make sure that your machine is made to handle the requirements of the game itself.
Monitors Can Shut Off for Various Reasons
There are a variety of reasons that your monitor might shut off. Performance issues with your PC might cause this behavior, such as graphics card problems and issues with partially unplugged or failing cables can also be the reason for this issue. You should also explore problems with your power sources, as fluctuating voltage can lead to these problems as well.
In rare circumstances, the monitor that you own might have failed, but you will find that this issue is not common overall. A monitor that works for other uses and only shuts off when you are gaming is not likely to have anything wrong with it specifically.
This article was last updated on March 21, 2023 .
