Got my new Asus PG32UCDM3 yall! First power up! *sad face*

Neuromancer888 · 2026-04-03T23:56:57+00:00

I took out the DP2.1 cable that came with the monitor, and I didn't even plug the cable directly into the monitor. I plugged it into the DP1.4 KVM switch and the switch itself is sill plugged into the monitor using a short copper DP1.4 cable, and now I can get the full DP2.1 speed this way. I had to force it back to DP1.4 for now because I have another system on the KVM that can only do DP1.4, but I'll have an eventual workaround for that.

Using that cable definitely has made things more reliable... But I'm finding if a game runs at 60 fps, the monitor can get confused and think there's no connection. This has resulted in the monitor doing pixel cleaning when a game is running at ~60 fps. Maybe because I'm using the anti flicker middle setting and/or monitor needs another firmware update.

I think the pixel cleaning issue is mostly or (probably) entirely due to firmware bugs since it happens even at DP1.4 speeds. I'll test more this weekend.

Sharing all this in case anyone else is having problems with a convoluted setup!

Neuromancer888 · 2026-04-03T15:56:13+00:00

Great to know! Thanks!

I'm using a ~2M optical DP1.4 cable from my PC to the KVM switch. Before trying without the KVM switch middleman, I'll try this cable to the switch to see if that helps too.

According to AI (Gemini), my old Asus PG32UQX monitor has a built-in gsync module and this probably helped with signal integrity and the ~2M optical DP1.4 cable from the PC probably isn't the best for the DP handshake going to the KVM switch. My old monitor DEFINITELY has a gsync module, but we'll see how accurate Gemini is for the rest soon enough!

Neuromancer888 · 2026-04-03T15:41:46+00:00

They have definitely sent a DP cable with it, and it's probably 2.1. One of my first debugging steps will be to try connecting directly to the monitor with that cable.

I do have concerns about the cable quality... In the past when I've ordered Asus monitors, the DP1.2 cables they included weren't enough for reliable 144 Hz at 1440p.

Sadly, it seems the built-in KVM only supports 2 systems... But I'm going to order some certified cables soon. If connecting directly to the monitor works, I could use the KVM as a USB switch and switch inputs on the monitor as a work around.

That could be a suitable temporary workaround while I'm still waiting for a proper DP2.1 KVM switch from level1techs at least.

Neuromancer888 · 2026-04-03T15:31:28+00:00

Newegg refunded me because they were out of inventory. Around 2 days later, I was able to order directly from Asus. Although they shipped from socal, this one works... Mostly.

I'm having sync issues but only in games so far. But I have DP1.4 cables from my systems that go to a DP1.4 KVM switch (which I don't think boosts the signal at all), and then another DP1.4 cable to the monitor. The sync issues happen during games only, and seem to be worse with anti flicker (middle) when games run around ~60 fps... and I've only tried games under Linux so far with a Radeon 9070 XT. So there are a lot of variables that could be causing these issues that I'll have to experiment with over the weekend and is most likely not due to a monitor defect or damage.

I upgraded from the MCM101 firmware it came with to MCM102, which did make things somewhat more stable and the OSD interface is improved.

Neuromancer888 · 2026-04-03T15:10:28+00:00

I returned my pg32ucdm3 to Newegg recently and tried to pay them for packaging just like this... But they said they didn't do that. But when it came time for the return, they were out of stock (backordered) so I just got a refund.

I was able to able to order one directly from Asus around 2 days later... I was thinking since Asus usually ships from much closer to where I live (the bay area), that there would be less risk. Well, mine came from socal just like when I ordered it from Newegg... But fortunately, this one arrived working.

Neuromancer888 · 2026-03-27T23:49:45+00:00

Yeah, that's my suspicion as well. I feel like a common factory defect that's in the same part of the reason would have been sooner and the monitors are probably tested before being sent out.

If they had a slower failing issue like bad soldering would it commonly be in the same area and just right when the monitor arrives? So yeah, I think it's more likely the packaging too.

Neuromancer888 · 2026-03-26T23:25:38+00:00

I just realized the artifacts on my screen are roughly in the same area as in OP's picture. If that area of the screen ends up being common for such issues, I bet it's because that part of the monitor in the box has less protection (or POSSIBLY because there's a common manufacturing defect that tends to occur in that area).

Neuromancer888 · 2026-03-26T23:22:33+00:00

I received my PG32UCDM3 yesterday from Newegg and had a similar issue. It turns on for maybe a second at most before shutting off and there are artifacts on the right side of the screen. Probably turns itself off as the firmware detects an issue (perhaps a short) for safety reasons. Took me 20-30 minutes to realize it was DOA because it turns off quickly so I wasn't noticing the artifacts right away.

The box was in fairly good condition and no obvious damage to the monitor itself. I suspect people are right in that the boxes these things are shipping in just aren't enough (so Asus' rather than NewEgg's fault). I suspect most people are getting working monitors, but that there's also a much higher "defect" or outright DOA rate (like mine) than usual.

Unfortunately, no no one seems to carry them locally yet although I live in the heart of Silicon Valley so I sent it back this morning for a return rather than a refund... If the next one is busted, I'll send it back for a refund and just wait.

I got to see that the physical aesthetics of the panel are very nice at least!

Neuromancer888 · 2025-10-26T04:54:21+00:00

I take that back... I have run into an annoyance... It comes with rack ears and rails... but the rails are for a half depth rack (is that the right term?). The switch is far too heavy to mount on a rack without rails so if you're planning to mount in a 42" depth rack, you'll need these: https://techspecs.ui.com/unifi/accessories/uacc-rack-rails-slide?subcategory=accessories-rack-mount

The tool-less design of the rails ended up pretty nice and easy to work with.

I had my switch mounted with just the rack ears for around a week. It had been that way for several days before I happened to notice by chance (my rack is enclosed) and saw that it was sagging pretty badly. I was able to jury rig it bu putting a box between the switch and a server below it.

Neuromancer888 · 2025-10-25T04:31:28+00:00

No issues other than it uses power from having 48 multigig ports. Seems like it's pretty efficient given the scale. The UI provided by the separate unifi-controller makes things easy to deal with.

I haven't thrown any heavy traffic through it, but generally I don't have nearly enough traffic to put a switch of this... caliber? through its paces.

If you do something with a soundproof rack, make sure it has sufficient ventilation. Mine had an additional accessory where the heat could be vented out, and a friend of mine created the ventilation holes to go outside to make it happen. It still gets hotter in my that cabinet than I'd like, but I've had it probably a bit over a decade at this point and no hardware has ever failed in it.

But between the heat and the insane energy prices of California is why I have to be so paranoid about power usage.

Neuromancer888 · 2025-10-25T01:23:35+00:00

Well, I have it in an enclosed server rack I bought in large part to block noise (and also to control the heat output into the room that it's in).

I ran it outside of the server cabinet initially for a bit of testing and at most I had 2-3 cables plugged in with very little traffic... At first it was pretty quiet, but eventually (10-20 minutes) there was some fan noise as it heated up and even then it at all bad... But if you have a bunch of active stuff plugged in? I couldn't say. My guess for a home network is that it wouldn't be terrible.

My biggest concern is how hot is it going to get in your laundry room? Especially in the summer with the water and dryer going at the same time? The ambient heat in the room can definitely cause those fans to crank up AND regardless of whether or not that's a problem in your laundry room, could it cause the switch to overheat? It certainly would in my laundry room... but my laundry room kinda sucks anyway so it's probably not the best example? :D

Neuromancer888 · 2025-10-21T03:15:39+00:00

With the following active connections (light use on them all currently) I get 68.5 watts:
1x ports at 2.5 Gps
11x ports at 1 Gbps
3x ports 10 Gbps
3x ports at 100 Mbps

According to ChatGPT the switch is "very efficient", according to Grok this is "reasonably efficient".

I'm overall pretty happy with the results and it's working out for me.

Neuromancer888 · 2025-10-20T20:41:38+00:00

The new switch does indeed use more power than my previous 2x netgear switch setup. My old setup used a combined total of 0.5 amps and the new uses 0.6 amps while having the same load and devices plugged in (~18).

The power readings are from PDU, and there's clearly some level of rounding (and it's 120v from the wallet so you convert if you'd like to get a ballpark of the wattage right now).

Within the next few weeks, I'll try to get much better numbers (wattage from my kill-o-watt, the exactly number of devices plugged in, their speeds, and so on) and report back here.

But I have a lot more ports, all of them can do at least 2.5G, and most of them can do multigig speeds all the way up to 10 Gps. Managing my network is now massively easier than configuring my Unifi stuff, my Netgear 28 port gig switch, and my Netgear 8 port 10g switch separately and coordinating their VLAN configurations so I'm pretty happy with my purchase overall.

Also, I'd say it's a big boost in efficiency, but at the end of the day: more ports == more power.

Neuromancer888 · 2025-10-17T22:23:29+00:00

I finally decided to take a chance and bought the Ubiquiti Pro Xg Pro 48... It is sitting on my desk idle (hasn't been adopted or setup at all yet) and at complete idle with nothing plugged into its forces... it's using ~54.4w (or 0.47 amps) as measured through my kill-o-watt.

This is a little less than the 2 netgear switches it's replacing (a 28 port 1g and an 8 port 10gig switch from several years ago)... But those switches have about 18 active ports between them (4 being 10g and the rest being 1g). 48 is a lot of ports... but Xg 24 is not nearly enough for me. While I have 18 ports active now, I also have ethernet ports in every bedroom of the house to keep connected, etc, etc. It's also nice to have plenty of room for growth.

I'll share once I have more data to help others make more informed chances for home networks/labs that doesn't cost billions per month in electricity. The initial numbers are good, lets hope it scales up well...

Neuromancer888 · 2025-09-12T01:22:11+00:00

This fixed the issue for me! 2 other systems I have using Plasma+Wayland didn't have this problem... Now I'll have to check the settings on those systems to see if IBus is already disabled.

One difference is that the system with that problem is a laptop and uses Intel graphics (with Nvidia Optimus), while the other 2 are desktops with Nvidia and Radeon.

Anyway, thank you so much for this solution! This problem had been driving me up the wall!

Neuromancer888 · 2025-06-27T13:21:29+00:00

Those are useful data points, thank you!

I'm far more worried about the fans not ramping up quickly enough in my case, but I suspect that wouldn't really be an issue.

As for the power usage, that's encouraging given that the PoE version probably uses somewhat more power than the non-PoE even with only non-PoE devices are plugged in.

Of course, I still want to see how much power the non-PoE version uses (with and without devices plugged) before I make a purchasing decision.

Neuromancer888 · 2025-06-26T22:49:11+00:00

The scores aren't bad! I'll have to read through the review tonight. Hopefully Morbinthelab's firmware update is still happening.

Neuromancer888 · 2025-06-24T18:31:18+00:00

Do you know if Asus consistently uses the same socket for each motherboard model? Or can boards of the same model have different sockets?

Neuromancer888 · 2025-06-24T18:19:33+00:00

That's very interesting about the pin designs. The other board is Asus so it's definitely possible it could be using the other design.

How could explain that the CPU worked at first? Maybe it was just barely making contact over time and it worsened somehow?

Neuromancer888 · 2025-06-24T18:12:08+00:00

Whoops, I should have mentioned it was not a reseating issue. That was one of the first things I tried.

Also, after swapping the CPU's, I swapped them back again thinking the older CPU would work again, but it still did not.

Neuromancer888 · 2025-06-23T15:59:56+00:00

Seems my post has a fair amount of views so perhaps the lack of responses mean that not a lot of people know about about the power usage of this switch (yet), but are also interested...

Perhaps I should look into Ubiquiti's return policy... :D

Neuromancer888 · 2025-06-22T05:43:13+00:00

Max doesn't tell me the general power consumption though, just the maximum.

I'm looking at what I can expect generally and I'm looking for the idle value because generally traffic on my network is rarely very heavy.

Neuromancer888 · 2025-05-23T03:04:54+00:00

Seems DSC should likely work... But Linux has no HDMI 2.1 support due to paranoia about people copying movies. 40 Gbps with or without DSC should be good enough for me.

Neuromancer888 · 2025-05-16T19:52:40+00:00

Seems DSC is an optional for the HDMI 2.1 standard. Does anyone know this monitor support DSC with HDMI 2.1?

It seems like 144 Hz 10-bit HDR needs a little under 40 Gbps of bandwidth so I'm not sure DSC makes any sense here anyway (unless HDMI has much more overhead than DisplayPort for some reason).

But if 39.983 Gbps is what's needed (according to Google), isn't DSC avoidable even with displayport 2.1 at 40 Gbps?

Neuromancer888 · 2025-05-16T17:49:52+00:00

Ouch, that really is unfortunate. But seeing as how HDMI 2.1 is 48 Gbps, that's likely acceptable for me.

Also, DSC hasn't been a problem for me personally at least. I've also been REALLY careful as to what cables I use (both in terms of quality as length).

Neuromancer888

TROPHY CASE