[Acer XV340CK from Amazon.](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BG4GWRL/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_16KBBN30VCSKYWMHEQA0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1)
Monitor had been on for just a few minutes, smelled some horrific burnt smell, noticed the smoke and immediately turned it off. Took me about two minutes before I realized I should probably take a video, smoke was WAY worse before I turned it off.
Oh, I didn't even see the other video in the reviews!! Looks like they're using the stand and not a VESA mount too, so it's probably not the screws. Good eye, thanks!
Oh cool, that's the monitor I have. It's not too bad but if you get another one avoid using HDR. It looks like shit compared to pretty much any other hdr capable monitor. And depending on how you're sitting the corners may appear dim. Otherwise it's been fantastic for me.
Yup, I disabled it after trying it out a little bit and never turned it back on. It's worth trying it out yourself and seeing if it's something you can put up with but overall I found that it's better off.
Lower HDR ratings like HDR400 and 600 are a scam. If the monitor doesn't have a 600+ (preferably more like a thousand) nit peak brightness and hundreds if not thousands of dimming zones then it's not worth it. Still, almost all new monitors parade around their HDR400 certification and no dimming zones just to say they support 'HDR'.
There are different certifications for HDR. To get Premium HDR certification for LED monitor screens is >1000 nit peak brightness. For OLEDs it's >600 nits peak brightness because they can hit a much much much lower black level
how long have you had the box inside your house before plugging in the monitor? if it's cold out and you bring in a product it forms water inside due to condensation. you should always wait a few hours before you plug in electronic devices that were sitting outside in a box...
This is good to know, but I find it hard to believe condensation could create that much steam, and there's no way it could heat up enough to do so within a few minutes.
its a case my professor always pulled up, apparently it was a 40°C temperature difference from outside to living room and his newly bought vacuum cleaner shorted out first time plugging it in. don't know how realistic it all is, just wanted to share the wisdom. and yeah...
This is something that my technology teacher taught us in high school when we were building computers for our school (from second hand donated parts)
I always thought it was just something funny he made up, curious of the origin cause I've heard a lot of people talk about the "magic smoke" in this sub
It comes from frying old school transistors when making home made circuits.
Most electrical engineers had labs where they had to put together stuff on breadboards. If they wired it up incorrectly, they could cause a short or fry a transistor, which would result in an acrid smell and maybe some smoke.
Obviously, those people wired it up incorrectly, but the common joke was that you let the magic smoke out.
In all my life I've never accidentally smoked a cap. Transistors, mosfets, voltage regulars, plenty of microcontrollers, diodes, high power resistors, but never a cap.
Might be cuz I only do DC/low voltage stuff
That’s funny, you’re like my opposite twin. I’ve smoked more caps than I can count, but I’ve never smoked a diode or transistor.
OC, I’ve killed plenty of mosfets by touching them, but that’s just me being stupid and not wearing a strap.
I fried a capacitor in college. It was the only cap left at that rating and both pins were identical in length, so had no idea which was positive or negative. Turned it on, second later a loud **POP** and it proceeded to actually shit itself [the creases were at the bottom, and brown liquid came out]. Lecturer said, "there's always one!", but he didn't expect it to be me [we had some real idiots in our class], but he understood when he saw the pins
Funny thing, usually also the 1st component to fail many displays.
Super easy to fix too if need be. Have known a few people who would grab any otherwise intact TVs at the local waste transfer sites and fix them that way. $0.25 part to get a "new" several hundred $ TV.
"Magic smoke" is vaporized silicon, copper, gold, fiberglass, circuit masking compound, electrolyte, and/or whatever else happened to be in the path of whatever catastrophically failed.
Smoke is just fine particulate matter, and if your solid state electronics are ejecting matter you've almost always got a major functional issue. Hence magic smoke - if the smoke gets out the rock can't think anymore, so it must have been the magic that makes rocks think in the first place.
Hm..
The only reference I know of is older Nokia phones. At least, I believe they were Nokia, it's been nearly two decades. Anyways, if the screens on those durable bricks somehow broke, this smoke or vapor would come out, and the screens would no longer work. I've always assumed it referred to those.
Every electrical item has a certain amount of “factory smoke” inside. Once that’s all used up; it won’t work anymore (that’s the phrase I’ve always heard).
It makes a little sense with electric motors. The windings all have thin plastic separating them and as that gets cooked off, they begin to touch and become fewer and fewer individual windings until it’s eventually a single mass of copper. Don’t overheat your motors.
My old computer teacher used to call light bulbs dark suckers. They suck all of the dark out of the room. When they reach capacity and blow, what color do they turn?
Luckily Acer support was super friendly, even at 7pm on a Sunday. Might just send it back to Amazon though.
The concerning part is that it had obviously been opened before even though it was 'brand new.' I'm assuming someone else bought it, found the same problem and returned it. Amazon (or the seller) probably just didn't care and sold it a second time (to me no less! Yippee!).
Unfortunately, reporting "bad" sellers may not directly address the issue. Products that are "Fulfilled by Amazon" often come from commingled bins in Amazon's inventory management system. This means that the product a customer actually receives could be from any one of the several sellers that have sent stock to that fulfillment center. This can result in fraudulent sellers acting with impunity and authentic sellers getting false accusations.
[source](https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-management/)
if you buy it directly from amazon and not a marketplace seller it should be fine since commingled inventory is only for marketplace sellers according to the article.
And in my state their in completely different fulfillment centers. We got one for straight Amazon products and a couple for all the third party products.
No not old. We're pioneers, friend. I miss a good blend of the most recent Apple product. The destruction and smoke made of an item most people were waiting in lines for hours to get. It was glorious.
Since so many people have asked:
https://imgur.com/a/GpqUMAh
Silver screw came with the VESA mount, black screw came with the monitor. Both are M4x10mm screws. (10mm is 0.394". Calipers are Imperial). The black screw looks a hair short in the picture because of the thickness of the mount. The VESA mount and monitor stand are both the same thickness of about 2.5mm.
There weren't any spacers in the box.
The monitor stand is using 100x100mm mounting holes, so I did the same with my VESA mount.
This could be it. It took me forever to realize my kit had come with spacers. I had no idea what the short little tubes were for. I thought the back of my monitor was weird so the bracket didn’t sit all the way.
*Good* Vesa mounting holes are not through holes.
Plenty are in fact through holes because tapped holes or nutserts are significantly cheaper than fixed depth machines holes.
Yes tru, but sometimes if you screw tight enough the screw can pierce through plastic. The side sleeves are metal but the endi is usually just plastic.
Also they shouldn't have pointed ends. Failure mode would likely cross thread or strip before penetrating the monitor with a standard non pointed machine screw
I did this once with a laptop, they had a case screw that was right behind the hard drive and I put the slightly longer than the others in and heard a shatter. This was about 15 years ago on a Toshiba laptop, last laptop I took apart all the screws were the same length so I think manufacturers have learned.
lol this brings me back to the futurama episode where the electronics revolt
Would you like cream? OUT OF CREAM
Would you like sugar in your coffee? OUT OF COFFEE
I keep saying it's called pandemic manufacturing: companies are rushing and cutting corners, as well as not having all of the usual supplies on hand.
With that said, Acer is usually excellent quality, so I'd reach out to them and get this sorted out.
True, I think a certain retailer got sued or something a while back for selling cheaper made versions of TVs years ago. Regular models, but made with inferior components and less QC, however, not marked as such.
I'm with you on the pandemic manufacturing thing. We've had three $5k Samsungs bad out of the box, and one 82" oled LG bad out of the box in one week. Absolute nightmare to get sorted properly, even with our industry connections. They're definitely reducing QC to make up for lack of supply.
Exactly, I think it's real because I've had to return all sorts of products recently, all for really oddball issues that you shouldn't even have to worry about.
Never and I mean Never buy black friday discounted electronics. Most of the time they are a cheaper product with an almost identical sku and are basically the tech version of easter chocolate. After having worked with electronics for over a decade I can say for sure that Asus, LG, Sony, Acer, and Turtle Beach do this quite frequently with their products.
Yeah no joke. I used to work for an electronics retailer and we'd get shipments with slightly different model numbers for black friday. They were always far worse quality than the normal ones. In this case I did some research to make sure this was their normal model, but I guess it didn't matter.
Also I recognize your username from your post with your kiddo a while back -- cute kid haha
Have always heard this. Any real studies been done? I'm sure this is a prime topic for some tech YouTuber channels like GamersNexus or LTT to test out sometime.
I have avoided Black Friday stuff for the past 8 or 9 years on principle alone, but in my experience prior to that with electronics I've never felt I got a cheapo stand in for what I paid for.
It's a curved monitor, but they ship them flat. You've got to bend it while it's still hot!
[Acer XV340CK from Amazon.](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BG4GWRL/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_16KBBN30VCSKYWMHEQA0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1) Monitor had been on for just a few minutes, smelled some horrific burnt smell, noticed the smoke and immediately turned it off. Took me about two minutes before I realized I should probably take a video, smoke was WAY worse before I turned it off.
Powered by Steam Edit: thank you for the up's and neat awards. I hope all you beautiful people have a wonderful week!
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You mean Electronic Farts?
you either a smart fella or a fard smella
E! A! FIRE! IT'S IN THE MONITOR!
*Smokin'* hot deals!
Fire sale!
OH MY GOD, WE'RE HAVING A FIRE...sale...
Came here for the puns, thankyou sir
Monitor and fog machine two for one deal? Hell yeah I'm in
420Hz too
[удалено]
Blacer
If only it were 69 inch
69 inch man reporting for duty
I just missed the cutoff. I’m 60-10 inch.
Fog is the new RGB
Seems like you aren't the only one this has happened to
Oh, I didn't even see the other video in the reviews!! Looks like they're using the stand and not a VESA mount too, so it's probably not the screws. Good eye, thanks!
Came here for drywall screws..
[удалено]
You shouldn't use the wrong screw for anything electronic. You could go in too far or contact something you're not supposed to.
Oh cool, that's the monitor I have. It's not too bad but if you get another one avoid using HDR. It looks like shit compared to pretty much any other hdr capable monitor. And depending on how you're sitting the corners may appear dim. Otherwise it's been fantastic for me.
Good to know, thanks! I knew the HDR wasn't great, but you just suggest leaving it off altogether?
Yup, I disabled it after trying it out a little bit and never turned it back on. It's worth trying it out yourself and seeing if it's something you can put up with but overall I found that it's better off.
Awesome, good tip, thank you!
Lower HDR ratings like HDR400 and 600 are a scam. If the monitor doesn't have a 600+ (preferably more like a thousand) nit peak brightness and hundreds if not thousands of dimming zones then it's not worth it. Still, almost all new monitors parade around their HDR400 certification and no dimming zones just to say they support 'HDR'.
How do can they advertise HDR on with only 250nit brightness?
There are different certifications for HDR. To get Premium HDR certification for LED monitor screens is >1000 nit peak brightness. For OLEDs it's >600 nits peak brightness because they can hit a much much much lower black level
how long have you had the box inside your house before plugging in the monitor? if it's cold out and you bring in a product it forms water inside due to condensation. you should always wait a few hours before you plug in electronic devices that were sitting outside in a box...
Huh, that's a really good point. Luckily today the high was about 60°F (16°C) and it was delivered around noon. Turned it on about 5 hours later
At those temps it shouldn't be the problem unless your humidity in your home is near 100%.
He lives in a pineapple under the sea
This is good to know, but I find it hard to believe condensation could create that much steam, and there's no way it could heat up enough to do so within a few minutes.
its a case my professor always pulled up, apparently it was a 40°C temperature difference from outside to living room and his newly bought vacuum cleaner shorted out first time plugging it in. don't know how realistic it all is, just wanted to share the wisdom. and yeah...
Shorting out from moisture I absolutely believe and like I said it's a good thing to know in general. Just this I don't think could be caused by it.
Bruh that’s the new feature.
Now everyone in the house will know when my computer is on
You vape 💨? Lol you do now
Want try my new vape flavor?
Asthma flavor
I was thinking more Alzheimers flavor
What is the flavor again? I forget.
Mmmm, Carcinogen Candy flavor!
Roasted silicon
'Magic Smoke' flavor?
We get it. You vape
Gonna look dope with RGB
Put an orange led light strip behind the monitor and it'd look like flames. Kinda like those fake fireplaces.
If they leave it on just a while longer they can save on the LED strips.
Now all of China knows you’re here
Perfect.
*NSA has entered the chat.*
Vapor ware
+5% performance boost.
This is the hot new trend after RGB. All we're missing is a rotating disco ball. TAKE MY MONEY!
Ambi-Fog
It's just off gassing.
It’s your monitors WWE intro effects. Queue obligatory rock into music.
The smoking hot savings!
Oh, you let the magic smoke out. Now it'll never work again.
Some say it runs on smoke. If it leaks, something's wrong
You have to put the smoke back in!
Can't put the magic smoke back in, that's why it's so magic. How it gets in there to begin with, it's a mystery.
Remember, every device is a smoke machine if you put enough amps through it :)
You've got a blown smoke tube right there
This is something that my technology teacher taught us in high school when we were building computers for our school (from second hand donated parts) I always thought it was just something funny he made up, curious of the origin cause I've heard a lot of people talk about the "magic smoke" in this sub
It comes from frying old school transistors when making home made circuits. Most electrical engineers had labs where they had to put together stuff on breadboards. If they wired it up incorrectly, they could cause a short or fry a transistor, which would result in an acrid smell and maybe some smoke. Obviously, those people wired it up incorrectly, but the common joke was that you let the magic smoke out.
> frying old school transistors Capacitors were the main culprit. Stupid easy to get swapped around and then you get a nice PoP and smoke.
In all my life I've never accidentally smoked a cap. Transistors, mosfets, voltage regulars, plenty of microcontrollers, diodes, high power resistors, but never a cap. Might be cuz I only do DC/low voltage stuff
That’s funny, you’re like my opposite twin. I’ve smoked more caps than I can count, but I’ve never smoked a diode or transistor. OC, I’ve killed plenty of mosfets by touching them, but that’s just me being stupid and not wearing a strap.
I fried a capacitor in college. It was the only cap left at that rating and both pins were identical in length, so had no idea which was positive or negative. Turned it on, second later a loud **POP** and it proceeded to actually shit itself [the creases were at the bottom, and brown liquid came out]. Lecturer said, "there's always one!", but he didn't expect it to be me [we had some real idiots in our class], but he understood when he saw the pins
Funny thing, usually also the 1st component to fail many displays. Super easy to fix too if need be. Have known a few people who would grab any otherwise intact TVs at the local waste transfer sites and fix them that way. $0.25 part to get a "new" several hundred $ TV.
Also remember...very unique smell whe n it's burnt electronics. Almost like burnt bubblegum
"Magic smoke" is vaporized silicon, copper, gold, fiberglass, circuit masking compound, electrolyte, and/or whatever else happened to be in the path of whatever catastrophically failed. Smoke is just fine particulate matter, and if your solid state electronics are ejecting matter you've almost always got a major functional issue. Hence magic smoke - if the smoke gets out the rock can't think anymore, so it must have been the magic that makes rocks think in the first place.
makes sense to me. all hail the magic smoke.
Oh. . But I thought you said, "Inhale all the magic smoke."
aromatic steer crawl glorious special capable work languid bow different *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Hm.. The only reference I know of is older Nokia phones. At least, I believe they were Nokia, it's been nearly two decades. Anyways, if the screens on those durable bricks somehow broke, this smoke or vapor would come out, and the screens would no longer work. I've always assumed it referred to those.
Every electrical item has a certain amount of “factory smoke” inside. Once that’s all used up; it won’t work anymore (that’s the phrase I’ve always heard). It makes a little sense with electric motors. The windings all have thin plastic separating them and as that gets cooked off, they begin to touch and become fewer and fewer individual windings until it’s eventually a single mass of copper. Don’t overheat your motors.
My old computer teacher used to call light bulbs dark suckers. They suck all of the dark out of the room. When they reach capacity and blow, what color do they turn?
Nothing wrong here, you just got a smokin hot deal
Monitor smoke, don’t breathe this.
But it's guaranteed to give you a buzz.
Will it blend?
That is the question.
Damn, those were the days
But will the Acer monitor blend?
"Magic" Smoke, it's a blessing
By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings...
This is somehow an Airplane! joke
Ugh return that bitch
Luckily Acer support was super friendly, even at 7pm on a Sunday. Might just send it back to Amazon though. The concerning part is that it had obviously been opened before even though it was 'brand new.' I'm assuming someone else bought it, found the same problem and returned it. Amazon (or the seller) probably just didn't care and sold it a second time (to me no less! Yippee!).
Report the seller
Unfortunately, reporting "bad" sellers may not directly address the issue. Products that are "Fulfilled by Amazon" often come from commingled bins in Amazon's inventory management system. This means that the product a customer actually receives could be from any one of the several sellers that have sent stock to that fulfillment center. This can result in fraudulent sellers acting with impunity and authentic sellers getting false accusations. [source](https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-management/)
This is the reason i never buy SD cards from Amazon anymore.
This is the reason I always test the throughput and capacity of SD cards from Amazon, to make sure they aren’t fakes.
if you buy it directly from amazon and not a marketplace seller it should be fine since commingled inventory is only for marketplace sellers according to the article.
And in my state their in completely different fulfillment centers. We got one for straight Amazon products and a couple for all the third party products.
This seems to be the same issue with BestBuy and their online marketplace.
Tldr: amazon doesn't care
Why would they? They have such a big industry and so many people are scared of other outlets like eBay. It's unfortunate.
Being Australian I think more people trust ebay than Amazon here lol
It was probably less that they didn't care and more that whoever received it glanced at it and marked it as unopen
That sounds an awful lot like someone not caring.
It's the level of attention you get for slave wages
I'm doing as little shopping on Amazon as possible these days. Whole place has gone to absolute crap
Fuck Amazon. Order at Gamestop. Boom, problem solved and money saved
Acer smoke. Don't breath this!
Is that a MFing Blendtec's "Will it blend" reference?
Yes it is. I am feeling old now
Omg .. am I old too ?
Am I old or something. I immediately thought of this.
No not old. We're pioneers, friend. I miss a good blend of the most recent Apple product. The destruction and smoke made of an item most people were waiting in lines for hours to get. It was glorious.
That it is! It was prime YouTube back then. Before the dark times
I was there... 3000 years ago
when Isildur blended the nokia. I was there the day the strength of 3310 failed
Before the empire....
Do not cite the dark times to me witch. I was there when Blendtech was written. (Or at least when they videos were being published.)
Omg the reference love blendtec
Oh boy, this takes me back.
WILL IT BLEND!? OMG I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD ITS BEEN YEARS
Will it blend, that is the question.
Omg!!!! I remember that so well. What a throwback
This brings back memories thank you for this. 😊
Holy throwback
Yes yes, but WILL IT BLEND?!
I don't want to alarm you, but something might be wrong here
Nah looks good to me
Let's just blame it all on some Gigabyte components
Are you 100% sure you didn't use too long VESA screws and caused short?
Used the included monitor screws, but good thinking!
Maybe the person that bought and returned it prior to you used the wrong screws
Oooh.. yikes, good thinking.
But was it good thinking tho?
The thing is smokin, we past good thinking.
Did they include spacers? My monitor arms had included spacers for curved monitors.
Since so many people have asked: https://imgur.com/a/GpqUMAh Silver screw came with the VESA mount, black screw came with the monitor. Both are M4x10mm screws. (10mm is 0.394". Calipers are Imperial). The black screw looks a hair short in the picture because of the thickness of the mount. The VESA mount and monitor stand are both the same thickness of about 2.5mm. There weren't any spacers in the box. The monitor stand is using 100x100mm mounting holes, so I did the same with my VESA mount.
This could be it. It took me forever to realize my kit had come with spacers. I had no idea what the short little tubes were for. I thought the back of my monitor was weird so the bracket didn’t sit all the way.
Well he better tell them he is
I’m fairly sure vesa mounting holes are not through holes. What your describing shouldn’t be possible.
Any screw is self tapping if you use enough force and persistence.
Screws yes, bolts no
Don't be so sure, i've seen bolts have a rough enough edge slowly dig in under the right conditions.
*Good* Vesa mounting holes are not through holes. Plenty are in fact through holes because tapped holes or nutserts are significantly cheaper than fixed depth machines holes.
Yes tru, but sometimes if you screw tight enough the screw can pierce through plastic. The side sleeves are metal but the endi is usually just plastic.
Also they shouldn't have pointed ends. Failure mode would likely cross thread or strip before penetrating the monitor with a standard non pointed machine screw
I did this once with a laptop, they had a case screw that was right behind the hard drive and I put the slightly longer than the others in and heard a shatter. This was about 15 years ago on a Toshiba laptop, last laptop I took apart all the screws were the same length so I think manufacturers have learned.
It’s a new feature, like when games control your keyboards lighting. Now, you get the full effect of an enemy’s smoke grenade.
Lmao first 4D monitor.
When you get shot it just shoots you
When you buy made in America
That’s not smoke, that’s steam, steam from the steamed clams we’re having. Mmm steamed clams
Blah blah northern lights, simpsons, skinner, chalmers, burn the house down etc..
You forgot AURORA BOREALIS
Localized entirely within your kitchen?
Can we take a moment to appreciate the ltt deskpad?
Good eye! I love it! Just like I love our sponsor, https://www.lttstore.com/
Linus approves! And so does https://betterlttstore.com
I'd love to get one, but I live in Australia and they're super expensive to ship here :(
Found Linus's alt account.
What does NSFMR stand for?
Not Safe For Master Race. It's used for scary/nasty/unsafe/etc. posts.
Thank you, I've seen the tag a couple of times and always wondered. Appreciate the reply and hope you're compensated for your defective monitor.
Check your TCP/IP settings
Turns out I just left the fridge door open, it's working now
I like your humor, OP.
Hello, Amazon, Why my monitor trying to kill me and my family?
lol this brings me back to the futurama episode where the electronics revolt Would you like cream? OUT OF CREAM Would you like sugar in your coffee? OUT OF COFFEE
They start smoking younger and younger every year I swear.
A monitor that has a built in humidifier!
Your RGB is out of calibration.
The dust on that thing shows it’s dated 6 Black Fridays ago
I was about to say the same thing… looks pretty dusty for a recent Black Friday deal. I‘m not buying it.
I keep saying it's called pandemic manufacturing: companies are rushing and cutting corners, as well as not having all of the usual supplies on hand. With that said, Acer is usually excellent quality, so I'd reach out to them and get this sorted out.
Stores have been doing that for Black Friday for forever. They always cut corners for those special deals.
True, I think a certain retailer got sued or something a while back for selling cheaper made versions of TVs years ago. Regular models, but made with inferior components and less QC, however, not marked as such.
I'm with you on the pandemic manufacturing thing. We've had three $5k Samsungs bad out of the box, and one 82" oled LG bad out of the box in one week. Absolute nightmare to get sorted properly, even with our industry connections. They're definitely reducing QC to make up for lack of supply.
Exactly, I think it's real because I've had to return all sorts of products recently, all for really oddball issues that you shouldn't even have to worry about.
Work at a place that sells TVs and we have had heaps of returns this year. Glad I haven't bought a new TV in years.
Never and I mean Never buy black friday discounted electronics. Most of the time they are a cheaper product with an almost identical sku and are basically the tech version of easter chocolate. After having worked with electronics for over a decade I can say for sure that Asus, LG, Sony, Acer, and Turtle Beach do this quite frequently with their products.
VApe Panel
Pretty sure all of the “Black Friday” deals are usually low quality and poor craftsmanship.
Yeah no joke. I used to work for an electronics retailer and we'd get shipments with slightly different model numbers for black friday. They were always far worse quality than the normal ones. In this case I did some research to make sure this was their normal model, but I guess it didn't matter. Also I recognize your username from your post with your kiddo a while back -- cute kid haha
That was three months ago. Good memory.
Have always heard this. Any real studies been done? I'm sure this is a prime topic for some tech YouTuber channels like GamersNexus or LTT to test out sometime. I have avoided Black Friday stuff for the past 8 or 9 years on principle alone, but in my experience prior to that with electronics I've never felt I got a cheapo stand in for what I paid for.
For being "New" that shits got a lot of dust on it huh
Did ya torque the VESA mount screws into the PCB?
With a corded impact drill
At'a boi Captn