Hello everyone! I just recently saw this forum and the problem with eye strain and pain from using a PC. I am from a neighboring forum that is trying to figure out the causes of input lag on PC peripherals in games. At the moment, like the eye pain, the true cause has not been determined, but there are things that may point to possible causes.

At the moment, there are two possible theories:

Damage to the motherboard, processor / "dirty" radiating AC - electricity.

Why do I associate eye pain and input lag?

There are many factors that I have read on this and other forums that indicate that all of these PC problems are closely related. When there is a problem - the image quality of your monitor drops, you see unsmooth, pixelation, blurriness, pixel displacement, and "wrong" scaling. The image lacks depth, clarity, natural color, the image is covered with a gray "invisible" film. Pixels are easily distinguishable, it is impossible to focus on anything on the screen. Personally, I got used to eye pain, thinking that it is completely normal behavior when working with a PC, until I started to notice that on portable devices (battery powered), eye pain is much lower than with AC powered devices. The problem should not be related to the OS, since it is observed in the BIOS.

Regarding AC.

AC electricity - unlike DC, will always have interference, this emi will come from your wiring in the walls, get into your PC and then to the monitor.

This will always, even if you use grounding, which should remove the interference from the case of the PC and monitor to 0mV, it will still affect you, since this field literally permanently envelops your devices and projects an EMI field of certain frequencies on you. You can take a WT3121 and bring it to the screen of your monitor. If your entire system shows 0mV - your grounding "works", but there may still be frequencies of a low nature that can and will affect you and your eyes. If your monitor shows radiation of ~15-35mV, it means that something is not grounded and is breaking through to your PC (in my case it was a metal table).

But I am sure that some of you have proper grounding (TN-CS) and you still encounter problems.
At the same time, you can see tens of thousands of messages about various problems with the PC after:

reinstalling Windows

replacing the GPU

and replacing other system components

but most often this is either always there or after reinstalling the GPU.

If you have experience with different hardware or have you encountered this problem on one and not on another pc, please write in this thread, thanks!

    • JJTL

    • Post #3

    @Slender Moderator note: Your embedded image had problems displaying. Perhaps try uploading to an alternate image host?

      Slender If you have experience with different hardware

      This.

      I can not use z390d + 9600kf with CPU overclock (basic BIOS 3 steps of OC), also as use DDR4 more than 2133 mhz (jedec 2400 or jedec 2666 also strain me, but most powerful strain I got using XMP)

      Last 4 years I used CPU OC + DDR4 XMP. I not sure, hardware become worse, or my eye/nerve sensitivity grow up

      Same I met with npb7 13700h miniPC - using 4800 memory is good, but 5200 modules (i tried 2 different modules with standart and shorter timings) gives me strain

      miniPC amd 780m based, gives me strain every memory I tried with, and every win10 / linux builds. @SunnyCove also got same experience with his same miniPC model

          simplex

          yes, indeed, using memory at default values ​​(without xmp) improves the response from the system, the mouse starts to "fly", and the overall quality of the picture and colors become richer and "more correct", so to speak.

          This is another confirmation that our problems are closely related.

          I found out that neither the frequency nor the timings affect this. Only the voltage. I can advise you to lower the voltage of all three of your components: gpu, ram, cpu and tell me whether this improved the eye strain in your case.

              JTL

              do you see pictures for right now?

              im see it and if you not im reupload it on another hosting (can u advice some?)

                  • JJTL

                  • Post #7
                  • Edited

                  Slender Think it works now. I also fixed the URL embeds.

                    Slender Only the voltage

                    Yep, I started to think the main issue is cross-interference, due to old capacitors

                    The next thing I mention, is CPU memory controller become bad, cos XMP also increase some CPU voltages

                    And third thing, can "K" CPU be the issue, when "non-K" is okay? I also had 12600k CPU + z690p d4 (2 pcs of each) and sold it due z390 looks more comfortable with GPUs

                        simplex

                        no, the problem can occur on all processors and all chipsets. The only thing I can say is that one person fixed his problems by buying a completely new PC.

                        By completely new I mean the motherboard, processor, nvme, ram.

                        Which were never used, were not repaired, and returned to the seller.

                        Perhaps the chips (processor, chipset) somehow "break" and begin to emit frequencies that have a bad effect on us, and the video card with the monitor only enhances this effect, like the screen.

                        Tell me, do you see the effect of running dots on a black background on the screen? As if the pixels are breathing and vibrating on the screen?

                        like you say, that can be internal pci express controller, inside cpu.

                        when you enable xmp, it increase voltage of SA.

                            Slender see the effect of running dots on a black background on the screen? As if the pixels are breathing and vibrating on the screen?

                            It is monitor's pixel invertion and FRC. Each of them have part, which make pixel dance

                            Firstly, I got strain with laptop with amd 780m. Then I bought miniPC with amd 780m and found equal strain. Using registers, we found how to disable GPU output dithering. But this not solve eye-strain at all. Using "safe" 4800 memory from npb7 miniPC also didnt solve strain issue. Another timings, reducing DDR5 freq down to 4000mhz… I think it is internal GPU rendering issue, which allow pixel to move chaotic

                            Then chaotic pixel dance of GPU meets monitor's FRC/invertion and boom

                            You can change monitor's refresh rate to 30 fps - nothing happends. You can reduce monitor's timings to longer, and this also didnt work.

                            Finally, you can connect "type-C to HDMI connector" and plug monitor into it. And strain will continue. It does mean, pixel dance imprinted in grapfic pipeline, not in GPU output

                            On the other side. WIth my previous laptop, I tried ~4..5 replacement screens. One was bad from the beginnin, from first look. I found using opple4, it has zig-zag wave pulsations of "flicker free" screen. While another screens have more "smoothed" pulsations.

                            Slender one person fixed his problems by buying a completely new PC

                            What is his new "safe" build?

                                  simplex

                                  his build is rtx 4060ti / 7600x

                                  If you need an exact build of his pc, I'll ask him about it.

                                  thanks to this forum, i was able to disable dithering on 3070ti and xl2566k, for this i switched my monitor to 6bit via cru.exe and disabled dithering in colorcontrol.

                                  thanks for the info about frc, does that mean it has nothing to do with eye strain and is considered normal lcd? i haven't noticed this on crt monitors.

                                  Or did I understand you incorrectly?

                                  By the way, when I turn on the built-in monitor menu, I see very clear fonts, all the pixels are in their places and do not "shift", but in Windows and BIOS everything looks different.

                                      Slender his build is rtx 4060ti / 7600x

                                      Yes, please. Monitor model, grapfic vendor / driver / cable, motherboard name + bios version, memory modules (xmp or not), ? power supply ?, windows build version

                                      I am not sure if real 8-bit monitors exists. Mostly i watched via slowmotion cam, have dot pixel invertion + spatial dynamic FRC (smooth each 4 square pixels). CRT didnt have LED problems, they have another 🙂

                                      Yep, the "bad" hardware is noticable even in BIOS. OS doesnt matter. You re lucky if can deal with 3070ti 🙂

                                          • JJTL

                                          • Post #13

                                          simplex I am not sure if real 8-bit monitors exists. Mostly i watched via slowmotion cam, have dot pixel invertion + spatial dynamic FRC

                                          I'm reasonably certain a true 8-bit panel can still suffer from potential inversion issues.

                                            Slender if it still won't work I can suggest imgur.com or imgbb.com for uploading pics. Also have you heard about NIC causing issues? There's many post of input lag/mouse issues due to consumer Intel nics which I'm sure would also affect video output.

                                                jordan

                                                hi, thanks for reply!

                                                I have tested a huge of external nics, both Intel and realtek. Nic can affect mouse movement, but only as a driver (nic and usb can be processed on core 0)

                                                your monitor has high rfi. Although I don’t think this is the cause of the problem, if the device to which your monitor is connected is grounded, this means that the grounding is not done correctly or is not working at all. Your monitor must be grounded via the hdmi/dp cable (if it's not optical) to your graphics card. You can try turning off the power cable and hdmi one by one and check interference.

                                                  simplex

                                                  no, unfortunately, I’m just used to pain in my eyes, I didn’t even think that they might not hurt when working with a PC. Unfortunately turning off dithering did not solve this problem for me.

                                                  Can I leave links to other resources here?

                                                  bb forum

                                                  here you can find a person who claims that the motherboard pch is damaged. And because of this, the picture is not displayed as it should be. I ask you to take this with a grain of salt, as the real reason may be different, but this person helped at least one, so I am posting this.

                                                      i don't think battery vs. AC is a factor in my case

                                                      (with the exception being purely software/driver things like e.g. AC power mode triggering a higher performance mode on the GPU that enables different rendering features)

                                                      there's quite a few portable devices that have been noticeably even worse for me, such as the iPhone SE 2020, compared to an average modern desktop monitor or GPU (which FYI are also bad for me, but usually not to the extent of the SE)

                                                      BTW stuff like wireless is not an issue for me either — if i have a good screen, it's comfortable for me anywhere (or at least anywhere where the lighting is good) — having lots of WiFi devices has never made any of my "truly good" screens worse

                                                      Slender Unfortunately turning off dithering did not solve this problem for me.

                                                      I tested gtx1060, rtx2070s, 2080s, 3080, 3080ti with z390 / z690 PC's and 2k 165 / FHD 60hz monitors. And finally i am at z390 + 1060 + FHD 60

                                                        • CCAP

                                                          • Post #20

                                                          Slender

                                                          Hello,

                                                          Do you think the following can be related to what you mention above?

                                                          I have a "working" set up at my job, where I can work with barely any issues. I have tested many monitors at home with no success, dizziness etc.

                                                          This week I took my monitor at work to my home, using the exact same laptop and Usb C cable to connect to the monitor… but I feel dizziness at home!!! how is that possible?

                                                          The only differences of my home set up:

                                                          • I use a different AC power cable to plug the monitor (I charge the laptop thought USB C)
                                                          • The table I use is glass and has a metal frame. At work is a wooden table with metal legs.
                                                          • I work close to the Router

                                                          Does anyone has a possible explanation?

                                                          Thanks,

                                                              dev