One of my two LCD monitors at work broke the other week, and since then it’s just been sitting on my desk collecting dust. One of my co-workers jokingly guessed the problem was a cold solder joint on the backlight inverter board, seemed reasonable to me so instead of throwing it out I took it home.

I first searched some common problems with these monitors to find a few that stood out: dirty components (which created poor solder joints), overheated transistors, and failed capacitors.

I took mine apart following this guide, and quickly noticed two budging capacitors right inside the LCD inverter circuit portion of the board. So I went down to Queale electronics, picked up a few new capacitors and soldered them on… Fixed for only $2.86!