You should power the board in the dark and see if there are sparks in the area of the ccfl lamp connectors. If there aren't on the board probably the lamps themself are bad.
I didnt see sparks on the inverter area, was trying this without the inverter emi shield.
It's also possible for the sparking to be near where the cable is attached to CCFL tube. I had a monitor fail like that. It functioned normally, otherwise (I could see my PC's desktop/background image with a flashlight and the monitor turned On and Off as it should.
So is this symptom less indicative of caps due to the sizzle sound?
Maybe.
We don't know that yet, unless you replaced all of the caps on the PSU (save for the big high-voltage cap on the primary, which typically does not go bad and does not need replacement).
I have three of these monitors, ill swap inverters and see if the problem follows inverter.
That would be the best thing to do, indeed. If another inverter board does the same thing in this monitor, then it's probably a lamp issue. Of course, also test the reverse to confirm the issue: the inverter/PSU from this monitor in another known working monitor. If it powers on and works fine, then it's definitely a CCFL lamp issue (likely arcing over somewhere).
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