Hello community. I've got an ASUS VA27EHE with a Panda LC270lf1l01 panel that started to behave strangely. A bit of intro:
If you power on the monitor without any inputs it turns on, displays the ASUS logo, shows no signal and goes into standby normally. When you plug it via HDMI sometimes and more recently, most of the times, it distorts the bios logo with horizontal lines, then when loading into windows 50-50 the windows emblem also is in horizontal lines. And after the system loads it almost always works properly, lol. On some rare occasions a part in the top of the monitor is being distorted...

The daughter board is working, however there's a short circuit on the realtek IC mic output. Since I haven't got the equipment AND the IC can't be found on the internet in the correct formfactor I smacked inside a BT receiver board for $1 and connected it to the speakers. It works, I guess, tho not the solution I was hoping for xD

Update:
Desoldered 3.5mm jack port and DA4, DA5 - still got a short between Ring2 and Sleeve (pin36-37 on IC). I guess further actions are wasted time since I doubt any of the small capacitors on output could be causing this so 99% chance the IC is dead. But then how come it gets all the voltages on it, like shouldn't it be disabled by the intel bridge IC?

Hello again. Today got the time to measure the voltages since I was busy with work and then had to replace the back cover of the LCD, so finally got to the insides.

I checked all the voltages on the ALC3266 chip, 1.8v, 3.3v, 5v are present on the pins just as schematic suggests. Only one I didn't check was pin10 because there's no pads there besides the pin and I was afraid to short it with the multimeter.

[B]Piernov[/B], you said there's a possibility to short the IC with a phantom mic voltage. While I was checking also checked the 3.5mm connector for voltages and figured...

Thanks, this actually clears up most of the things then. I did check the daughter audio board just to see what it was. It does have a separate IC (which is probably the DAC) but there's no schematic for it so cant really say much besides there not being shorts to the ground there. As you suggested, I'll try starting from the voltages on the realtek IC when I open it up again. I don't think anybody connected anything besides a headset to the 3.5mm port which is why I thought it's strange for the mic output to be shorted. If I saw, for example, the speaker outputs being shorted I wouldn't even be...

Thats the issue, I do have a device in device manager. At first it was a High Definition Audio Device, later on after I tried a ton of drivers thinking it was a driver issue it became Audio for monitors with ID 8086. In sound settings there are no connected devices (even grey inactive ones). After I plug in 3.5mm headset there's no reaction, but if I use type-c headset with mic it works perfectly, both sound and mic and they are displayed in sound input/output devices with Audio for Monitor device being grayed out. So the realtek device is missing. But its strange to think it just burned without...

Thanks for replying. This was actually the essential question that bothered me since I'm not entirely sure how the audio circuit is supposed to work. If I assume audio from type-c port also comes from the realtek chip digital part then the chip is alive. If not then I don't see any point to find out the fault since I'm unable to replace the chip with the tools I have at home and even after googling parts most sellers sell the chip in a different form factor than the one I have. And after thinking some more a short on mic line shouldn't matter anyway since if you plug in 3pin headphones, mic is...

Hi and thanks for your reply. There is an HD audio device in device manager and the windows utility doesn't find any faults just that no input/output devices since mic line is shorted. I checked the power rails for shorts with multimeter and they were clean. Didn't check voltages as I was almost sure the IC itself is dead. I'll try to change the diodes next weekend and see if the short disappears. If it doesn't then I'll check the voltages and post again. Thanks

Since no one replied yet, I thought I'd update what I found. There was a short on mic line, but I didn't have the time to check it all. Today I tried the easiest thing which was to test the diodes with multimeter and indeed, DA5 is in short. The ones on speaker lines have infinite resistance since they are okay. Now I'll just need to find time to disassemble it for the 5th time to also check DA4 since it's on the hidden part of the motherboard and pray the realtek chip is alive....