I recently picked up 4 broken monitors on craigslist, one of which was an Optiquest Q7 (model VS10807). Optiquest is ViewSonic's budget-friendly line of monitors. It has a single VGA input and audio input with built-in speakers. This is a 17" LCD with CCFL backlights. It was described as not turning on, but I didn't even try and power it on, I went straight to disassembly.
To open the monitor, first lay the monitor on it's face and remove the four screws on the back near the stand. There are four screws on the side of the monitor, but leave those in for now. Turn the monitor over so it's facing screen up. You need to remove the bezel from around the screen. To do that you need to get your fingernails between the bezel and the glass of the screen itself. Pull out and up. When you do it correctly it will release a tab. Move over several inches and do it again. Slowly work your way around the screen and eventually you can lift off the bezel. Now you can remove the four screws on the side and pull the metal panel assembly out of the rear plastic housing. Flip the panel housing over and there is a metal cage housing the circuit boards. Remove the wires and a couple of screws and you should be able to remove the cage. Once I removed the circuit board from the cage the problem was easy to spot - bad caps, the two big ones by the heat sink.
Besides the two bulging caps (pictured), the other thing that really surprised me is that this monitor is a single board design. This is the first monitor I've seen where the power, inverter, and video processing is all on a single board, single-sided through-whole construction. Heck, there isn't even a small little board for the power LED and switches, those are located on this board as well. This had to have been an incredibly cheap monitor to manufacture.
Even though only two caps were bulging, and even though I have an ESR meter, I decided to just replace all caps. Unfortunately since this was part of a large order, I didn't write down which caps were in this monitor. So I can't tell you what caps were at what location. I replaced then all with Panasonic FM series (or FC series when FM was unavailable). Because of the single-sided construction working on the monitor was easy. Soldered in the new caps and now the monitor powers up and works just fine. One monitor saved from the trash for only a couple of bucks worth of new caps.
To open the monitor, first lay the monitor on it's face and remove the four screws on the back near the stand. There are four screws on the side of the monitor, but leave those in for now. Turn the monitor over so it's facing screen up. You need to remove the bezel from around the screen. To do that you need to get your fingernails between the bezel and the glass of the screen itself. Pull out and up. When you do it correctly it will release a tab. Move over several inches and do it again. Slowly work your way around the screen and eventually you can lift off the bezel. Now you can remove the four screws on the side and pull the metal panel assembly out of the rear plastic housing. Flip the panel housing over and there is a metal cage housing the circuit boards. Remove the wires and a couple of screws and you should be able to remove the cage. Once I removed the circuit board from the cage the problem was easy to spot - bad caps, the two big ones by the heat sink.
Besides the two bulging caps (pictured), the other thing that really surprised me is that this monitor is a single board design. This is the first monitor I've seen where the power, inverter, and video processing is all on a single board, single-sided through-whole construction. Heck, there isn't even a small little board for the power LED and switches, those are located on this board as well. This had to have been an incredibly cheap monitor to manufacture.
Even though only two caps were bulging, and even though I have an ESR meter, I decided to just replace all caps. Unfortunately since this was part of a large order, I didn't write down which caps were in this monitor. So I can't tell you what caps were at what location. I replaced then all with Panasonic FM series (or FC series when FM was unavailable). Because of the single-sided construction working on the monitor was easy. Soldered in the new caps and now the monitor powers up and works just fine. One monitor saved from the trash for only a couple of bucks worth of new caps.
Attached Files