SOLVED: Screen Flickers Off and On, Power Issue, External Monitor, Blade Pro

Issue and Quick Solution:

For at least a year now I have had an issue with my Blade Pro 17 (2019) RTX 2080 max-q where the screen (an external screen, the Razer Raptor) flickers off and on, then stutters, randomly while playing video games. The whole flicker process took 5-30 seconds. I know this post is long, I'm writing with lots of detail because I could not find any other posts with this specific set of symptoms and after a year of troubleshooting I have finally fixed the issue. Hopefully there are enough details here for anyone in the future with the same or similar issue to get the fix they need. TLDR; buying a new power adapter (and battery) for the laptop solved the issue.

Symptoms and Diagnosis:

This was a very hard problem to diagnose for a few reasons. It only happened when I had an external monitor plugged in and it tended to happen only when entering a pause menu. It also primarily happened when HDR was enabled. As soon as I would try to enter a pause menu, the screen would turn off and then back on and flicker/stutter for 5-30 seconds. Even though I could still game, it would only happen in pause menus, the flicker completely broke the immersion of gaming and I became fearful of needing to pause any game.

Because of the symptoms, mainly screen flickering off and then on again, I thought it was the monitor connection or a software problem (maybe with HDR). The fact that it happened on about 50% of the games I would play caused me to go back to thinking it was the monitor connection. But the fact that it mostly happened while HDR was on and when entering a pause menu had me chasing software issues.

At some point I noticed that whenever the screen would turn off/on and flicker, the lights on the keyboard would also turn off and then on again as well as the fans in the laptop would turn off for a second and come back on. That is when I started to suspect it was a power draw issue.

However the fact that it pretty much only happened when entering a pause menu with an external monitor plugged in still had me confused and running in circles. I figured that maybe our home just didn't have good enough wiring or again...maybe it was a software issue. Games were playable but I always dreaded entering a pause menu and it really took away from the immersion factor while playing those games. We moved to a new home and the problem persisted, it actually seemed to get worse.

Discovery of Actual Issue and Solution:

One day I went to take the bottom cover off the laptop to dust it out and found that the batter was so swollen I could not put the bottom back on. That is when I went full in on the idea that there were definitely power issues causing the problem. I bought a new battery and a new power brick. I ran the laptop without a battery a couple of times and specifically played a game I knew would cause the flicker and sure enough as soon as I hit pause the whole system shut off and powered down entirely. Yep it was definitely a power issue.

The new battery came first and I installed it. The problem persisted, hit pause in a game, the system would fall back to battery and then come back on, screen flickered, fans powered down etc. The new power brick came and I am very grateful to say that the issue has gone away. I can once again play my games without terrible interruptions on my beautiful Razer Raptor external monitor and they are playing better than ever, smooth as silk. So as it turns out there was a problem with the old power brick.

Analysis:

I believe that whatever issue there was with the power brick was caused by heat as there had been a few occasions in the past in which the brick definitely overheated from being squeezed into too tight of a space. Ultimately it seems as though maybe the issue was that the power brick would shutdown and stop providing power for a few seconds whenever it switched from having a high load drawn from it to a lower load being drawn. Hence the reason it mostly only happened when entering pause menus. Likely this put a high level of stress on the battery because the battery would have to take over powering the system while it was running a much higher loads than it usually would on battery alone. Which of course caused the battery to overheat and swell.