 I think as computer enthusiasts, we've probably all been through this at least once. We get all wrapped up like planning and building a sick new gaming rig, and we're like super excited. And then we realize as we're plugging it into all of our old peripherals, that maybe it would have been wise to save some of our budget to upgrade the rest of the experience. Oops. So today's video is gonna be something a little special. We are going to be attempting to take this broken monitor, which we got on eBay, I guess? Yeah, eBay. For $120 and make it a fully functional Aorus AD27QD, which is a $600 US dollar monitor new, with this replacement panel that we also got on eBay. Oh, that one was AliExpress. Oh, what would you say our success chances are today? They're either like 100% or it just doesn't work. It's like all or nothing. Speaking of all or nothing, check out GlassWire at the link in the video description. GlassWire allows you to instantly see your current and past network activity, detect malware, and block badly behaving apps on your PC or Android device. Use offer code LINUS to get 25% off GlassWire. Again, that's linked below. Monitors get broken in transit all the time, and because their housings and stands are typically made from reasonably robust materials, the most common thing to die is the panel itself. I've actually had it happen where a monitor like tipped over in its box, I took it out and boom, gigantic crack across the screen. So finding broken monitors on sites like eBay is actually usually as simple as searching a gaming monitor for parts or broken or damaged gaming monitor, and you should have a whole bunch to choose from. Now, we went with this one for a couple of reasons. Number one is that it's a pretty darn nice monitor. We actually reviewed it a while back. It's only FreeSync, but it's one of the few FreeSync models that Nvidia actually signed off on as a G-Sync compatible. So it's a pretty no compromises experience, and it's got a bunch of great features, 2560 by 1440 resolution, HDR support, one millisecond response time. What else has it got? IPS panel. It's a pretty sick monitor, especially for 120 bucks. Now, should we fire this thing up and see what happens? Sure. I can't think of any reason not to. Might as well just make sure that it is actually broken. Maybe we got a working monitor for 120 bucks. So once you find a broken monitor that you like on eBay, I'd recommend finding that you can actually get the panel that you want before pulling the plug, obviously. So go on something like Panel Look and search your monitor model number, and then you'll be able to find the panel number, which you can then put into AliExpress or somewhere similar, and find out how expensive that's going to be to get a chip to you. I'd recommend getting something from Acer, Asus, or LG. They seem to be the easiest ones to get panels for. Samsung, I just had no luck for it all. Same with Alienware. How lucky are you feeling today? In this situation, like zero. Yeah. This is powered on. It seems to be powered on. It's detected. And it's cracked. Yeah. That's definitely broken. That's a cracking. Actually, since we have it here, sanity check. Nope. My stand seems to be just fine. No, this is actually like a super decent monitor. So it's been a while, but I think with these no bezel ones, you kind of have to pry this up. Is that right? Do you know how to disassemble this? No, I couldn't find anything on disassembly. It is pretty new. The good news is we don't really have to worry about. Yeah, I don't be careful with it. Yeah. Oh, I'm making progress. You want a real man screwdriver? Nope. I don't think that suction cup is going to help. Oh, here we go. That sounded like a couple clips broke, but they're broken then engaged. It's really in there. Maybe it doesn't need to come out. Well, like when we're done, if you're able to use the menu, that would be pretty great. I think they're just really, really big clips. Hey, nice. Now it's coming out. Trust us, we're professionals. We've got some attachment doodads here. What are they called again? Chummies? Yeah. I'd give that a solid like C plus for cable routing. So now things should get a little bit simpler. We've just got a handful of screws to remove. I mean, is this the point where we should pop out our replacement panel and see if it even physically looks like it might go in here? Yeah. Okay. I think I get more concerned than you because I'm typically the one paying for them. Well, like the idea of this was that in the end, I just want to buy it because I'm cheap. Oh, really? So. Oh, so we're building your monitor right now. Basically, yes. Oh, wow. How'd you pull that scam off? That was literally like the entire idea for the video. I was just like, I'm too cheap to buy a monitor. So this looks really close. Yeah, that looks right. So this one, guys, we're only laying it down like this because it does have a protective covering on it. But this little piece of the housing here looks identical. This PCB looks the same. All these mounting points look the same. I'm not saying that makes this a guarantee. I'm just saying that makes our chances a lot better than if they weren't the same. Okay, so as long as this is functional, this should work. Now, some of this stuff, we don't even have to detach necessarily. Actually, how is that even attached? It's just taped on. That's pretty typical. Oh, okay. I know, right? Really? I know because it has like mounting holes on it. No, no, I've seen this before, I swear. Huh. Doing the research for this, I was actually shocked at how simple it is to do this. To just make your own monitor. Maybe that's the next stage. Yeah. Try to salvage this tape if you can because there's no real reason not to reuse it. Boop. Okay. That's the part where if I accidentally bridge some of these contacts, because I'm sure there's some pretty decent size capacitors on the other side, I could die. That's fine. Okay, you were paying attention to where this was routed, right? Yeah, it goes down to here. So this right here is the cable that carries the data from the display controller and scaler, this unit here, to the panel itself. So we don't want to bung this up. That's presumably kind of hard to find a replacement for. Oh, yeah. So there's pretty much no point removing this tape from the plastic frame because we just want to slide our new panel right in and then lay the tape back down pretty much. Yeah. Okay. Remember that LGA3647 motherboard you broke? Oh, yeah, that was rough. Actually, that wasn't rough. It had one to us like the next day. That doesn't make it good. So that's it. The training wheels are off. There's no protector on the panel now. Yep. All right. That was relatively simple. I kind of wish we'd taken a picture before we took everything apart, but honestly, it should be fine. Okay, so that seems to be cable routed. Yeah. This one, I think, goes in here. Yeah, get that lined up just right so that we can tape it on. There's a like a ridge here. Oh, yeah. See how it kind of settles in there? So I'm ready to put in the other side of our ribbon cable. It's not too delicate of an operation compared to working within like a notebook or something like that. Maybe you could give me a piece of tape to hold it down. This has been too easy. I'm getting concerned. Yeah. Well, the same thing happened the last time we replaced the panel. We just popped it apart, smacked it back together, and we were like, okay. So that's it. Theoretically, this is assembled now. Should we test it before we bother putting it totally back together? I was about to ask you the same thing. I kind of like the drama better if we've reassembled the entire thing. Okay, want to line me up here? Oh, hold on. I got a few cables to put in. Yeah. Gotta hook up that RGB. Yeah, those are really important ones. All right. Do you remember how this went in? I think it slid the bottom had to go in first, right? Yes. Okay. There we go. Come on. There we go. See how many of these clips we didn't break? Actually, there's not that many clips broken. What are you even talking about? This is on camera. This is on here perfectly fine. Yeah, it's pretty good. No one's going to be able to tell. All right here. I might as well plug this in here since you're holding it. Hey. Is the panel on? Yeah, it was briefly. Can we put it on the stand? Yeah. It's just like kind of difficult. There you go. Okay. So, so far the RGB is working both on the back of the monitor and on the stand. That's a good sign. I don't know that this has DisplayPort 1.4, so it probably won't be able to do the full thing, but- That's fine. We can go get a gaming rig to test it properly if it actually works. How do I even display on this? There we go. See, just theoretically it's on. Uh oh. No. Could it be that there's more wrong with it than we thought? Oops, I think I just turned it off. I mean, that's the thing about a broken product is it could be broken in more than one way. Do you know that your MiniDP works? Um, it's worked in the past. Let's get something else. What pump is this? Oh, that's Corsair's new one. Oh, cool. Yeah, it's their Hydro X1. It's actually made of like, clear nylon, so it's like super like durable and won't stain and stuff or something. Cool. I gotta tell you, I'm having doubts. So I guess this is the moment where you find out if I get a monitor or if you get a monitor. Yes! Yes! Just like that? Okay, we need a keyboard and mouse then. So does this thing work? It'd be pretty unfortunate just to have like a crosshair. Oh, nice. Dashboard. One potential snag right now is we can see it's clearly running at 60Hz. So we don't know if that's because it can't run it more. Yes! Yeah, I would wait until I actually see it running. Yay! Not too shabby. Huh. All right, let's grab DeadPixel, buddy. Yeah, this is kind of like the second moment of truth right here. So the thing is guys, just because you got a compatible panel doesn't necessarily mean that it's an A panel. Maybe you got not an A panel. No. Oh, okay. No, no, no, no, that one was fine. Just a piece of dust. Okay, black looks good. So we want to turn it green so we can look for something like a red pixel that's standing out to us. Looks good. Mm-hmm. I don't see any blue pixels standing out. No dead ones. No. Oh, what's that? I think that might be a dead red pixel. Bummer. I'd say you actually did pretty well here. Yeah. Yep, I think you've got a dead red sub-pixel. So he's got one-third of a dead pixel on the whole panel and it's not right in the center. So one thing that's also really possible here is that the calibration could just be completely off. I'm going to take the time to actually use our display calibrator and put it on here. But for anyone else, a pretty good method is just take a piece of paper, put it up there, change the RGB values in your monitor OSD and boom. I'd love to know if G-Sync works though. That's interesting. What? It didn't pick up G-Sync compatibility. What drivers are on this? They could be old, actually. So one odd behavior is that I noticed a little bit of fringing on the display earlier. And it turns out that it's running at 4K, even though this is a 1440p panel, but then it knew to run it at 150% scaling. So everything looked the right size. But there's a little bit of... There's some artifacts on text, so it doesn't look crisp. We're going to get the graphics driver installed though, and that should fix that. Okay, moment of truth time here. Set up G-Sync! Woo! All right. Freaking awesome. So I guess that right there is kind of why this is a good idea as opposed to just buying a cheap monitor. Because this is, in the end, with the panel and the broken monitor, it's slightly more expensive than just buying a 1440p 144Hz display. Yeah, the original plan was we were going to get the panel for closer to like, what, 150, 180 bucks? Yeah, it was like 140. And the whole solution was going to be about $300. But now, what did we end up with? Yeah, so it's been like two months. The order was canceled three times. And in the end, we paid more like $300 for the panel. So that's still $180 less than new for a very respectable G-Sync compatible gaming monitor. And what? 45 minutes of time? Yeah, something like that. Well, for the actual upgrade, not the like, all doing all the research. Well, the research was pretty quick too. The two months of canceled orders on AliExpress weren't too fun. So this is your new monitor then? Yeah. See, there's good ideas for videos, and then there's good ideas for videos that are also because I'm really cheap. Don't include that. I think that's fine to include. That looks good. Not bad. Not bad at all. I need a better gun. Oh, man. Not bad at all. I need a better gun. Blah, blah, blah. Do they have headshots? I think on those, if you get them like when their mouth's open, it's extra damage. Oh, okay. This is awesome. You should try it. All right. Speaking of awesome and things you should try, FreshBooks. FreshBooks is the small business accounting solution built for how you want to work. So whether you're a freelancer or a small business owner, it's a simple way to be more productive, more organized, and to get paid faster. With FreshBooks, you can create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds. You can set up online payments to get paid up to four days faster. You can see when your client has seen your invoice to put an end to the guessing games, and you can take the whole experience with you on the go with their fully featured apps for iOS and Android. So check it out at freshbooks.com slash tech tips, and make sure you enter Linus Tech Tips in the How Did You Hear About Us section. So thanks for watching, guys. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button. But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like the one I'm wearing. This is our elemental shirt. And oh, yeah, also this hoodie. And our community forum, which you should totally join.