Repairing a Samsung SyncMaster 226BW (bad capacitors and flickering)
About a month ago, my Samsung SyncMaster 226BW began experiencing slight flickering with the screen. It became progressively worse and worse as the weeks went on, and finally it was at the point where it would take 5-10 minutes to ‘warm up’ and shake loose the flickering screen.
Not only was it concerning, but it was just plain annoying having the screen ‘seizure flash’ you. So, I started researching for a possible fix without buying a new monitor of course, I figured it must have been something cheap to fix. Well I uncovered that these monitors (as well as many other Samsung models + TVs) all suffered from the same woe. Bad Caps! Bad Capacitors were to blame for the flickering.
I started with the monitor, and laying it ‘face’ down on a towel to reduce the chance of damage to the LCD and opening it up to take a look:
and looked around the power board for bulging capacitors, and I found 2 of a possible 3 that I should replace:
Getting started here are all the tools you need:
Solder, soldering iron, 3 capacitors (2x 820UF 25V + 1x 330UF 25V)
You can purchase the needed capacitors at Mouser Electronics. Also I purchased my soldering iron and solder at my local Chicago Harbor Freight which ended up totaling me $25 bucks which is pretty cheap for a task that fixed an originally purchased ~$200 monitor that is 2 years out of warranty.
Anyway, after replacement, here is what the job looks like finished, and my monitor is now back in working condition!
In the end, this venture cost me less than $25 dollars, and only 30 minutes of actual hands on work. If you are saying to yourself “eh I can’t possibly do this”, well don’t worry this is VERY simple, just go step by step, detaching the old caps from the board is as easy as heating the points on the back of the board, and wiggling/pulling the caps loose. Its difficult to damage anything if you simply just pull the board out and work slowly watching not to clip anything.
Enjoy! If you have any questions or comments, post below.