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Flashing screen when plugging in charger and with low battery?

t0aster0ven
Level 7

Hey! So I just bought my ROG Zephyrus G16. I purchased it open box in excellent quality from Best Buy. It's been great for the couple days I've used it other than a few things- Every time I plug in or unplug the charger while using it, the screen will briefly flash black. I tried googling it and followed a video that had me change the refresh rate but that did not solve the problem. The other issue I have arose just tonight. My friend and I were ******ing around on the Sims 4 when suddenly it alerted me that it was low on battery. I went to plug it in and it flashed again, but a few times and more quickly. I ended up saving the game and we just quit for the night

I'm just frustrated because I bought this to stop having laptop issues as the last one I had would freak out and be nearly unusable if I tried to update it or it would update itself after I postponed the update too long and nobody I went to had a permanent solution. If anyone has any advice, please share. I'm so sick of having terrible luck.

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3 REPLIES 3

QQ02
Level 11

That does sound like the screen refresh rate being updated. By default, when the power adapter is unplugged, the screen reverts to a lower refresh rate, hence the brief flash to switch over. This may be a pain to set not to happen.

For that, you'd have to set the refresh rate to be the same with or without the charging cable. Check your Windows settings, System, Display, Advanced display options. The refresh there can be 60 Hz or higher (e.g. 165Hz on mine). When you unplug the cable and that value changes (may need to go Back and then Advanced display options to see the change), that is what is causing the brief flash. If you set them to be the same (e.g. higher for more fluid gameplay, but shorter battery life), the blinking should stop.

The annoying thing is, sometimes the performance modes in Armoury Crate can override these settings. So if you set your refresh rate lower on Silent, it may still be higher on Performance, so if you do use the different modes in Armoury Crate, keep in mind that you'd have to update the display advanced settings during those as well.

Note that some iGPU settings disable changing the refresh rate completely, such as AMD VSR can cause the refresh rate to be locked to a single setting.

Okay, I tried this, but here's what happened:

- While not plugged in, I changed the refresh rate from 60.01Hz to 165.02Hz to match the setting it was at while plugged in. When I then plugged in the charger, it didn't flash and I was excited that maybe it was working. However, when I then removed the charger, it flashed and reverted back to 60.01Hz.

- I then tried doing the opposite: changing the refresh rate while plugged in to 60.01Hz to match the setting while not plugged in. Again, when I removed the charger it was okay, but then plugging it back in reverted the setting to 165.02Hz and it flashed.

I made sure that I was hitting "apply" and "keep changes" but it's not... keeping the changes. I tried switching performance modes and altering the refresh rate and continued to have this issue. Maybe I'm not understanding completely but does it sound like I missed anything that you can tell? Otherwise maybe I just need to take it in somewhere and have someone look at it as it's happening.

I had this same issue. What you need to do is open the Armoury Crate and you'll see a section called 'System Configuration' under the 'GPU Mode' settings. In the 'System Configuration' section, make sure to click and turn off the 'Panel Power Saver' option. This feature is what overrides the Windows Display settings. It allows the laptop to switch to a lower refresh rate on battery power. So far, this has fixed my issue so this should fix your problem as well. I hope this helps as this is my first time trying to help anyone with a problem in the ASUS Forums!