Here's a problem that's driving me crazy. Any suggestions are welcomed.
My son gifted me a new PC build. New tower, new guts. He and his roommate have built a few of them now, so he felt pretty confident. Graphics card is GEForce RTX 3070. No monitor, so we went a got a new monitor that should have worked fine with it. Samsung Odyssey G5 (LS27CG512ENXZA). Hooked everything up, and the monitor cycles through its inputs (HDMI 1, HDMI 2, DisplayPort) twice, finds nothing, and turns off.
Hooked the monitor up to my wife's laptop upstairs, and it worked fine. Interesting. So we brought up the new PC, hooked everything up, and it worked fine! The monitor recognized the PC, and the display looked nice. So we took everything back downstairs (it will live in the basement, replacing my current PC).
Hooked everything up, and still no go. We tried HDMI 1 and HDMI 2 inputs, with both outputs on the graphics card and also on the motherboard. All connections were tight, all the usual things. Every "help" site says the same thing first; check the connections, check the power, yes and yes. We tried every possible combination twice. In case it was the cable (even though it hooked up to the laptop fine) we went and bought a new HDMI cable. Still nothing.
Just to make sure we weren't going crazy, we took everything back upstairs, hooked it up, and it worked! Took everything back downstairs, and nothing. Every combination of inputs to the monitor and outputs from the PC, twice. Tried turning the HDMI cable around, which shouldn't have done anything, and it did exactly that: nothing.
We took the PC to Micro Center, who checked it out head to toe, and even did some "advanced" diagnostics, but everything was running perfectly as far as they can tell. It was a new build, but we built it Christmas Day in the living room, so there was a chance that we'd messed something up. An hour or more of diagnostics, and they couldn't find anything wrong. Went home, tried everything again. It works in the living room, but not in the basement.
Some of my son's friends suggested weird power issues. The power strips in the basement are pretty old, so fine, I bought two brand-new power strips with surge protection. Unplugged everything, plugged both brand new power strips directly into the wall, plugged in the new PC and monitor. Nothing. Monitor cycles through the inputs twice, then goes to sleep.
The house is 60+ years old, maybe the power in the living room is sufficient but the basement isn't quite good enough? Side note: All previous PCs and monitors (there have been many over the 20+ years we've lived here) have worked fine. In the basement.
One more bit of information: The monitor was "open box" at Abt. It had been returned for reasons unknown, but had been thoroughly tested by them, and it does work fine with the laptop, and also with the new PC but only upstairs, not downstairs.
TLDR: New monitor and PC work together fine in the living room, but not in the basement. Independently both work fine.
What in the hell?