Monitor Shuts Off While Playing Games: How To Fix It

Gamers find it very irritating when the monitor shuts down off midway while playing games and it is a common issue that can be caused by various things. During multiplayer games, it can get annoying if your monitor shuts off. Small issues like jitters or packet loss can irritate gamers however monitor shutting off is a bigger problem as compared to those small issues and it can be quite annoying. To fix this problem, you need to know the reason why it is occurring and the solutions can vary from device to device depending upon several things.

To get to the point is that we can help you if you’re looking for a fix of monitor shuts off while playing games like Valorant or Overwatch. There are some things you need to know before getting into fixes that will result in getting rid of this problem and those things are:

Why Monitor Turns Off While Playing Games?

To solve this problem, you need to first figure out why is your monitor turning off during games and then you can try the correct steps to get rid of this problem. Here are the common causes that can make your monitor turn off while you’re playing games:

Overheating Of Components:

Most modern computers are designed in such a way that if any component gets heated it shuts down the computer. Whenever any heat-related problem occurs in any components, your computer gets turned off.

Sometimes it won’t shut off while you are idle or running low memory applications however when you run large applications or games, the computer will shut down. That is due to faulty components being used and overheating resulting in turning off your monitor due to high usage while gaming.

One way to find out whether your component is overheating or not is to monitor the fans. If the fans are loud or sound too much that means the components are overheating.

Hardware Problem:

If there is a problem with any of your computer’s hardware, then it can shut down without giving any warning or asking the user.

Most usually, it is the frequently installed hardware and you need to check, and if it isn’t that one, then you will need to check after removing the hardware one by one. You can also remove non-essential hardware which includes a modem, sound card, and an expansion card.

Outdated Drivers:

The most common reason the monitor turns off while gaming is due to outdated or old drivers which result in not fully operating certain hardware. We will discuss later how you can update your drivers and what steps you need to take to fix problems with the operating system.

Having your monitors or GPU drivers outdated will result in crashes and monitor shutting down so you will need to check all the outdated drivers.

How To Fix: Monitor Turning Off While Playing Games

Now that you might have figured out why is your monitor turning off while you play games or at least know the causes why the monitor turns off while playing games. Hopefully, if you follow these steps, you will be able to get rid of this problem. Here are the necessary steps that you can take to solve this issue:

Solve Heating Issues:

Fixing heating issues isn’t that hard if you know the cause which component is heating up and why it is heating up. Firstly, you need to check whether the cooling fans are working properly or not, and if they aren’t you will need a new cooling system for your PC. 

Components like processors, GPU can overheat if you haven’t cleaned them or have been using them for quite some time. You will need to apply thermal paste to it and if you’re using a laptop you can just use a cool pad to get rid of overheating. Be sure to check the heat sink and confirm whether it is working properly or not.

However, if there is some problem in the heat sink, you will need to fix it and re-apply the thermal paste and new compound and place it again properly. Most of the heating issues are due to a problem in the power supply as it gets old, the fan gets slower which results in shutting down of monitor while you’re using too many resources. 

The use of resources puts the load on the power supply and if its fan isn’t working properly, it shuts down the PC due to overheating and doesn’t turn on for 1-5 minutes.

So, be sure to check whether the power supply and its fan are working properly and consistent power is being transferred or not.

Updating Drivers:

Nowadays almost every gamer uses a graphics card to play games and having outdated drivers can cause the monitor to shut down, to fix this problem, you will need to install the latest drivers. You can install the drivers both manually and automatically, we would recommend you to automatically install the drivers if you don’t have any experience with installing drivers.

To install the drivers manually, you can go to the device manager and see what drivers are not updated or missing and download the right versions of that driver and install them. 

You can refer to the official site of your component’s manufacturer like Nvidia or AMD for the latest and legit drivers. To install drivers automatically, you will need to install the drivers from third-party software. 

You can install additional software to automatically install drivers such as Driver Booster, Driver Easy, and Snappy Driver installer.

After installing the latest drivers, you will need to restart your PC and hopefully, it would have fixed your problem.

Resetting the Video Card

If the issue is still occurring after updating the drivers, then you should try resetting the Video Card. To do that, you will need to remove the GPU with PCI and power slots from the motherboard and clean it with pressurized air.

 After that, you can apply thermal paste to the GPU if needs be and put the GPU on. If all the hardware isn’t faulty, then this will fix this problem with your monitor. 

Be sure to check out how to reset your video card before trying to reset it. You can also try to reinstall the monitor’s drivers and try to check whether there is a fault with your monitor or not.

Check the Cables

If you are sure that your system doesn’t have an overheating problem then you should check the electric cables including power cable, HDMI, and VGA cable. 

Sometimes the problem is caused by a stabilizer or UPS that you’re using so be sure to check the connection. 

You need to check all the PSU cables, video cables that you are using. Also, try to check all the cables coming out of the PSU and check whether the connection of the motherboard with the power supply is perfectly fine and working.

Conclusion

Now you have understood multiple reasons why the monitor shuts off while playing games?

We hope that you would have now gotten rid of this issue, the hard part is identifying why this issue is occurring, and once you have gotten that fixing it is very easy. The fix depends on your problem and it may vary from device to device. Even if you can’t find the problem applying this fix will help you locate the problem and tell whether you need to change the component or not of your PC.