i think as computer enthusiasts we've probably all been through this at least
once we get all wrapped up like planning
and building a sick new gaming rig and we're like super excited and then we
realize as we're plugging it into all of our old peripherals that maybe it would
have been wise to save some of our budget to upgrade the rest of the
experience oops so today's video is gonna be something a
little special we are going to be attempting
to take this broken monitor which we got
on ebay ebay for 120
and make it a fully functional aorus
ad27 which is a 600 us dollar monitor new
with this replacement panel
that we also got on ebay oh that one was aliexpress oh
what would you say our success chances are today
they're either like 100 or it just doesn't work it's
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monitors get broken in transit all the time and because their housings and
stands are typically made from reasonably robust materials the most
common thing to die is the panel itself i've actually had it
happen where a monitor like tipped over in its box
i took it out and boom gigantic crack across the screen
so finding broken monitors on sites like
ebay is actually usually as simple as searching a gaming monitor
for parts or broken or damaged gaming
monitor and you should have a whole bunch to choose from
now we went with this one for a couple of reasons number one is that it's a
pretty darn nice monitor we actually reviewed it a while back it's only free
sync but it's one of the few freesync models that NVIDIA actually signed off
on as a g-sync compatible so it's a
pretty no compromises experience and it's got a bunch of great features
2560x1440 resolution HDR support uh one
millisecond response time uh what else has it got
ips panel it's a pretty sick monitor especially for
120 bucks now should we fire this thing up and see what happens uh sure i can't
think of any reason not to might as well just make sure that it
is actually broken maybe we got a working monitor for 120 bucks so once
you find a broken monitor that you like on ebay
i'd recommend finding that you can actually get the panel that you want
before pulling the plug obviously so go on something like panel look and search
your monitor model number and then you'll be able to find the panel number
which you can then put into aliexpress or somewhere similar and find out how
expensive that's going to be to get it shipped to you i'd recommend getting
something from acer ASUS or lg they seem to be the
easiest ones to get panels for samsung i just had no luck for at all same with
alienware how lucky are you feeling today um
in this situation like zero
this is powered on seems to be seems to be powered on it's detected
so and it's cracked
yep that's yep that's definitely broken that's a kraken
actually since we have it here sanity check
nope the stand seems to be just fine no this is actually like a super decent
monitor so it's been a while but i think
with these no bezel ones you kind of have to pry
this up is that right do you know how to disassemble this no i couldn't find
anything on disassembly it is pretty new the good news is we don't really have to
worry about yeah being careful with it yeah
oh i'm making progress
you want a real man screwdriver
nope i don't think that suction cup's gonna
help oh here we go uh that sounded like a
couple clips broke but uh this is broken then engaged
hey it's really in there
maybe it doesn't need to come out well like when we're done if you're able
to use the menu that would be pretty great i think they're just
really really big clips
hey nice now it's coming out trust us we're
professionals we've got some some attachment doodads
here what are they called again uh yeah
i'd give that a solid like c-plus for cable roading
so now things should get a little bit simpler we've just got a handful of
screws to remove i mean is this the point where we should pop out our
replacement panel and see if it even physically looks like it might go in
here yeah okay i think i get more concerned than you
because i'm typically the one paying for them oh
well like the idea of this was that in the end i just want to buy it
because so oh so we're building your monitor right
now basically yes oh
wow how'd you pull that scam off that was literally like the entire idea
for the video i was just like i'm too cheap to buy a monitor
so this looks this looks really close
yeah that looks right so this one guys we're only laying it down like this
because it does have a protective covering on it but uh
this little piece of the housing here looks
identical this pcb looks the same
all these mounting points look the same i'm not saying that makes this a
guarantee i'm just saying that
makes our chances a lot better than if they weren't the same okay so as long as
this is functional this should work now some of this stuff we don't even
have to detach necessarily actually how is that even attached it's just taped on
that's pretty typical oh okay i know right really i know because it has like
mounting holes on it no no that i've seen this before i swear huh
in doing the research for this i was actually shocked at how simple it is to
just make your own monitor maybe that's the next stage yeah try to
salvage this tape if you can because there's no real reason not to reuse it
boop okay
that's the part where uh if i
accidentally bridge some of these contacts because i'm sure there's some
pretty decent sized capacitors on the other side i could die
that's fun okay you were paying attention to where this was routed right yeah it goes down
to here so this right here is the cable that carries the data from the display
controller and scalar this unit here to the panel itself so we don't want to
bung this up that's presumably kind of hard to find a replacement for oh yeah
so there's pretty much no point removing this tape
from the plastic frame because we just want to slide our new panel right in and
then lay the tape back down pretty much
yeah remember that lga 3647 motherboard you
broke oh yeah that was rough actually
that wasn't rough had one to us like the next day
that doesn't make it good so that's it the training wheels are off
there's no protector on the panel now yep
all right that was relatively simple
i kind of wish we'd taken a picture before we
took everything apart but honestly it should be fine okay so that seems to be
cable routed yeah um this one i think goes in here yeah get that lined up just
right so we can tape it on
there's a like a ridge here oh yeah see how it kind of settles in there so i'm
ready to put in the other side of our ribbon cable it's not too delicate of an
operation compared to working within like a notebook or something like that
there maybe you could give me a piece of tape to hold it down
this has been too easy i'm getting concerned yeah
well the same thing happened last time we replaced a panel we just popped it apart smacked it back together and we
were like okay so that's it theoretically this is assembled now
should we test it before we bother
putting it totally back together i was about to ask you the same thing
i kind of like the drama better if we reassemble the entire thing
okay wanna line me up here oh hold on i got a few cables to put in
yeah gotta hook up that RGB yeah those are really important ones all right do
you remember how this went in i think it slid the bottom had to go in first right
yes okay there we go come on
oh there we go see how many of these clips we didn't
break actually there's not that many clips broken what are you even talking about
this is on here perfectly fine yeah it's pretty good no one's going to be able to
tell all right here i might as well plug this in here since you're holding it
hey is the panel on um yeah it was briefly
um can we put it on the stand yeah it's just like kind of difficult
there you go okay so so far
the RGB is working both on the back of the monitor and on the stand
that's a good sign i don't know that this has displayport
1.4 so it probably won't be able to do the full thing but that's fine we can go
get a gaming rig to test it properly if it actually works
how do i even display on this there we go
see theoretically it's on
uh oh
no could it be that there's more wrong with it than we thought oops i think i
just turned it off i mean that's the thing about a broken product is it could
be broken in more than one way do you know that your mini dp works
it's worked in the past let's get something else
what pump is this uh oh that's Corsair's new one oh cool yeah it's their hydro x1
it's actually made of like clear nylon
so it's like super like
durable and won't stain and stuff or something cool i gotta tell you i'm having doubts so i
guess it's the moment we find out if i get a monitor or if you get a monitor
yes yes
just like that okay we need a keyboard mouse then so does this thing work it'd
be pretty unfortunate just to have like a crosshair oh nice
dashboard one potential snag right now as we can
see it's clearly running at 60 hertz so we don't know if that's because
it can't run it more yes
uh yeah i would wait until i actually see it running
yay not too shabby
huh all right let's grab dead pixel buddy
yeah this is kind of like the second moment of truth right here
so the thing is guys just because you got a compatible panel doesn't
necessarily mean that it's an a panel maybe you got not an a panel oh okay no
no no no that one was fine just a piece of dust
okay black looks good so we want to turn it green so we can
look for something like uh a red pixel that's standing out to
us looks good
i don't see any blue pixels standing out no dead ones
no oh what's that
i think that might be a dead red pixel bomber
i'd say you actually did pretty well here
yeah yep i think you've got a dead red
sub pixel so he's got one third of a dead pixel on
the whole panel and it's not right in the center so one thing that's also really possible
here is that the calibration could just be
completely off i'm going to take the time to actually use our display calibrator and put it on
here but for anyone else a pretty good method is just take
a piece of paper put it up there change the RGB values in your monitor osd and
boom i'd love to know if g-sync works though
that's interesting well it didn't pick up g-sync
compatibility um what drivers are on this it could be
old actually so one odd behavior
is that i noticed a little bit of fringing on the display earlier
and it turns out that it's running at 4k even though this is a
1440p panel but then it knew to run it
at 150 percent scaling so everything looked the right size
but there's a little bit of uh
sort of there's some artifacts on text so it doesn't look crisp
we're gonna get the graphics driver installed though and that should fix that okay moment of truth time here
set up g-sync
all right freaking awesome
so i guess that right there is kind of why this is a good idea as opposed to just
buying a cheap monitor because this is in the end with the
panel and the like broken monitor slightly more
expensive than just buying a 1440p 144hz
display yeah the original plan was we were going to get the panel for closer
to like what 150 180 bucks sounds like 140. and the whole solution was going to
be about 300 but now what did we end up with
yeah so it's been like two months the order was cancelled three times
and in the end we paid more like three hundred dollars for the
panel so that's still 180 less than new
for a very respectable g-sync compatible gaming monitor
and what 45 minutes of time
yeah something like that well for the actual upgrade not the like
all doing all the research well the research was pretty quick too
the two months of cancelled orders on aliexpress weren't too fun
so this is your new monitor then yeah see there's good ideas for videos and
then there's good ideas for videos that are also because i'm really cheap
don't include that i think that's fine too
that looks good not bad not bad at all i need a better gun
do they have head shots um i think on those if you get them like
when their mouths open it's extra damage ah okay this is awesome you should try
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