Widescreen Gaming Forum

Disclaimer: By reading this guide and performing any action herein, you agree that WSGF's or myself, will not be held responsible for any damages that may be caused due to improper handling or care of your LCD panel when attempting to follow this guide. Also, you're fully aware and for the most part completely comfortable with the thought of voiding the manufacturers warranties. With that said, please be careful.

Note: I am not an expert in the electronics industry, just a helpful IT guy who loves to mod anything and everything. If I label anything incorrectly, please feel free to correct me, I won't be offended.

If you would like to post your specific LCD panel de-bezeling instructions, please feel free to do so, it would be nice to have a compilation of different monitors and how they look when properly disassembled and setup.

Why would someone want to remove the bezel?
It can drastically reduce the black space between multiple displays.


vs


See the difference?



Nuff said.

What do you mean by "Floating Box"?
On the full size panels that contain an internal power supply, there is metal box that may or may not be firmly attached to the backside of an LCD panel. This is typically the underlying part where the VESA mount attaches to the panel. The VESA mount will still attach correctly, but your monitor may be holding on by some small pieces of tape, which is not ideal and could result in a costly disaster.

This image, stolen from here, courtesy of ADSTA, shows a perfect example of how much fail this design is for people that want to go bezel-less. In order for the panel to remain safely attached, once mounted, the panel needs to stay in it's original enclosure otherwise the VESA mount will only hold the power-supply and not the panel it is weakly taped to (See those two black peices of tape? There is most likely a 3rd one up top and that's it). This means that the LCD panel may or may not just fall off during regular usage.


This image, stolen from here, courtesy of Gunja, shows a very thick monitor. However, as thick as this monitor may be, you can see up top that the panel is securely fastened to a back panel by four screws (two up top, two on the bottom - most likely), which is then safely attached to the power supply box with the exposed VESA mounting holes.


This DIY is directed towards people that may have a floating box type panel, although other users may find this DIY of value to them as well.

Estimated time needed to invest in order to properly perform this DIY: No more than 2hours for all three monitors

Tools required
1. Phillips head screw driver.
2. Some smaller, more agile fingers. (I will apologize in advance to you fat fingered individuals)
3. Industrial Strength Metal Repair Tape $5 at your local hardware store.
4. The will to tear apart your precious monitor. This one is important.

Ok, Let's do this!

Advice:
Remove all jewelry on your fingers before starting the procedure. I will remind you again later.

Step 1: Prep the patient
Gently disconnect all cables from your monitor (power, video, usb, audio, etc) and remove the monitor stand that is attached to the backside of your panel.
If you're using a VESA mount, please remove the monitor from the desk mount that you're using.

Step 2: Put the patient on a clean operating table
Place the monitor on its back on top of a secure surface, such as a clean desk or a clean dining room table. My wood IKEA desk did me just fine, although if you would like to put down a towel before resting your monitor, please do so. Ensure that the surface is clean of debris otherwise you may scratch your LCD panel when you put it face down. If you have long nails or jewelry on your fingers, please remove all jewelry and place a small hand towel on your LCD screen to prevent as many fingerprints as possible.

Step 3: Open the patient
NOTE: If there are no obvious ways to dissemble your monitor (eg. Screws), please use Google to determine the proper way to disassemble your monitor. Otherwise, try the method below. Youtube may even be a valuable resource if someone has posted a teardown video of your monitor.

Most screens have a piece of plastic that surrounds the panel when you're looking directly at it. With the monitor laying securely on its back, gently take your three middle fingers from both hands, place all six fingers directly on the screen and attempt to get your fingers under the plastic surround. If you gently pry at it (with up to ~20lbs of force), it will pop off, please do not worry too much about damaging the panel with such force, they can handle the pressure. Once your fingers are under the plastic surround, slowly ease your way around the monitor until you have completely removed the plastic surround

Please be very careful when you're near the area of your panel that contains the buttons, most of them are only connected by a ribbon cable. Some of these little circuit boards can simply be extracted from the plastic surround, others require that they are unscrewed from the plastic surround. If your buttons are built into the bottom, they may be fastened to the piece of plastic on the backside of your monitor. Find which method your monitor requires and perform the necessary actions so that the plastic surround can be set aside. With that piece of plastic removed, please make sure that your panel is still securely fastened to the back piece of plastic before continuing.

Now, gently place your monitor on it's face.

Looking at the backside of your monitor, hunt for some screws that may be connected to the metal around your internal power supply, aka that "Floating Box".

I found 4 of them

and removed them


If your monitor has no screws to be found, please research how to remove the back panel, I will not provide further advise that may steer you in the wrong direction.

Going forward, your monitor should be free of all plastic and look something like this:



Here are some examples of how the floating box was poorly attached to my panel



The next few steps may apply to your monitor but are specifically written for Dell u2312HMt users
Step 4: Lipo / Weight reduction
Remove the USB ports from the left side of the monitor by unplugging the ribbon cable. Don't be shocked, If you're running three monitors, you most likely have no use for the 4 USB ports that are blocked by the adjacent monitor anyway. Also worth noting is that their is a large metal tab that will prevent your triple monitor setup from looking complete. Please do not skip this step! Keep in mind that there are still 6 USB ports on the underside of the panel, we will not be removing those.



Step 5: Bandage the patient
If you would like to, you can reuse the metal tape that was on the USB adapter anywhere on the panel - like so:


I wasn't too happy with just one additional strip of metal tape holding up my $300 investment (and neither should you!) so I took a trip to Ace Hardware for this:


The tape is good for up to 230degrees Fahrenheit, so their is no need to worry about the adhesive softening due to panel heat, like other types of tape.
It is also HVAC industrial strength so it can hold a lot of weight with just a few strips of tape. This particular tape is ideal for fastening the floating box to the back of a panel. In fact, this tape is so desired that it is the same type of tape that is already used by most display manufactures.

As you can see, it's not going anywhere...



While your at it, find a secure place to position your LCD buttons


Set aside the panel on a flat surface, face down, in a safe and secure area before proceeding.

Step 6: Cut out some more fat *Dell u2312HMt users
Grab the back part of the monitor and remove the matte silver plastic trim that made the bezel so thick in the first place.


Now you should just see the back piece of plastic in it's naked form:


Step 7: Stitch the patient *Dell u2312HMt users
Take that back piece and place it over the rear of the monitor:

Screw it back together


Step 8: Revive the patient and move onto the next
At this time you can reattach the monitor stand, all cables, and move on to the other two monitors. Now that you understand how to do it to one monitor, monitor 2 and monitor 3 should be a breeze.

Let's see the end result, shall we?




The blue glow was created with the relocation of the power button to the underside of the panel. It is actually much softer in real life, the photo over-exaggerated the blue light in this picture.


But how well does it game?
With Eyefinity bezel compensation my computer does Windows and Games at 5992x1080



Dirt 3

The bezel compensation works wonders in Dirt 3




Skyrim

Skyrim won't load at 5992x1080, just 5760x1080 which means that bezel compensation is slightly off. It's barely noticeable, but it certainly exists if you look for it.


Team Fortress 2

The bezel compensation works amazingly in Team Fortress 2 as well (no UI mod installed... yet)


Anyway, I hope that you're successful in de-bezeling your monitors. I also hope that many people find this DIY of some use to them. I spent many hours typing up this DIY (I don't have Word, so I am sure there are many errors) and I look forward to your responses and possible contributions.

Thank you so much for reading,
Drew

That looks very very nice!!!! Good job!

I would have to do the same if I had multiple screens!

So it is possible to do a Bezle Less Monitor with original Stand. Thx a lot for detailed infos and How To.

Maybe i'm gonna do it with my Dell U2311H too....

Please do.

After you have de-bezeled your 23" Dell, please let me know if you feel that I need to add any additional steps, I tried to be as thorough as possible.

Anyway, I hope that you're successful in de-bezeling your monitors. I also hope that many people find this DIY of some use to them. I spent many hours typing up this DIY (I don't have Word, so I am sure there are many errors) and I look forward to your responses and possible contributions.

Thank you so much for reading,
Drew

Awesome, I have two Dell U2312's coming in the next couple of days and then another when they go on sale again. I'll be doing this straight away, thanks!

Please let me know if you have any questions. I would be more than happy to help.

Would you be so kind and show me a picture or "guide" of how you mounted the button pcb to the bottom of the monitor ?

Awesome!

Brilliant guide 3lfk1ng :twothumb I'm looking at new screens, and thanks to you its now down to 3 x U2412M or 3 x U2312M's.

edit: Have you considered spraying the bare metal parts black?

Thanks alot 3lfk1ng.
I saw your post today and got off my lazy butt and bit the bullet.
Went to the hardware store but they had no metal repair type tape so I remembered I had a roll of gaffer tape at home and thought I'd try that on my U2311H monitors.


Worked a charm.

The fun side:


Only downside is the buttons are moulded into the case so I just left the little circuit board dangling.
I turned the monitors on without getting zapped, always a good thing, and will just turn them on and off at the powerpoint from now on.

I have been debating doing this to my HP S2031's. But in my case it seems it would be a tricky proposition based on my monitors design very similir to this.....

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/environment/productdata/Countries/_MultiCountry/disassembly_monito_2010315235625.pdf

Anyone had luck with similir monitors or am i fresh outta luck? lol

Not really a bit deal, i got my monitors as a sub 250 USD 3 screen setup. So if bezel reduction isn't an option, o well. lol You get what you pay for and at 80 bucks a pop i really cant complain.

EDIT: Im on day 11 in a row of work and running on very little sleep so if my post don't make sense or if i am in the wrong place/breaking any forum rules/whatever the case may be, please forgive me. lol Thank :)

I succsessfully did one monitor. (Going to do the others tonight)

After very carefully getting the internals out of the casing (Since they were all separate pieces it was fairly dificult) I carefully layed them out and then using some of that Aluminium tape i put them together. That tape is the only thing holding it together ATM. But its some fairly hardcore stuff so i feel it will be adequate in the short term.

I will post some picks later when i get them all done. :)

Thanks for being that extra little push i needed to go thru with this.

Operation complete on all 3 monitors. This is my thin bezel sub 300 dolar eyefinity setup (including the money it cost to make my custom stands XD)

3 HP S2031's debezeled and set up in portrait mode. Due to my distrust in tape, and the extreme floating box nature of these monitors (the floating box is literally floating inside the plastic bezel and not attached at all to the rest of monitor) i started looking for some good stands. When nothing looked promising (or cheap) i headed to the local Home Depot and picked up some wood, weather stripping, fabric 'super sliders' and screws and began working. All three stands took about half an hour to make and the total cost was 17 USD. :)

These stands are designed to keep the monitor in place (with the help of a bit of aluminium tape they are rock solid) while giving support to both the screen and 'floating box' Thus taking stress off of the tape holding it together and also just the nature of the stand holds the monitors together. So its a fairly effective way to keep the monitors together, stable, moveable, ect after the extreme modifications that took place to get them debezeled. :)

If you have any questions, want a step by step on how to debel HP S2031's or more pics feel free to ask.

So without further ado, here is the debezeled, custom standed, HP S2031's in portrait eyefinity> :) Enjoy

Attached files

That's awesome ^

I've been thinking of doing the same, but I have to get up the nerve to do it on $2000 in displays.

I can only imagine. It was hard enough to do it with 3 80 buck monitors. lol I can only imagine how hard it would be to tear open some expensive monitors.

Also thanks for the kind words, im pretty happy with the way it turned out. :)

Thanks for the guide, I just used this to finish my first surround setup.

Hello Everyone,

Thank you guys so very much. I'm very glad to see that my guide came in handy and some of your setups look great. Sorry I have been absent as of late, school and work have been killing me (2 full time jobs and one 5 unit class are not fun)
My class ends on the 16th so hopefully I will have more time to spend around the forums, until Guild Wars 2 comes out :D

@aohxbram
As for how I mounted the little PCB controller:
I just used the little peice of tape it was already using and mounted it in the bottom right corner of the bezel on the underside. There is a little grove in the plastic on the backpanel (can you feel it?) Just put it to the right of it and you should be fine.


@dr1v3n l1k3 stol3n
I did consider spraying them black but I was afraid to cause any accidental overspray. Because the non-glossy film is a form of plastic, the paint would immediately adhere to it. That's not to say that it is not possible to do carefully, I just didn't bother. Looking back however, I actually prefer the silver.
Why?
Well, when I am playing games, the colors actually reflect ever so slightly on the silver and help the bezel to blend into the nearby pixels. I barely ever notice that I am on 3 seperate monitors, it's amazing.

@ADSTA
Came out great, that is one helluva setup you have there.

@Bran187
The end result is worth it.

@MadDawginYa
Looking good!

@Everyone else
I just wanted to let you guys know that everything is still working and holding up just fine. I haven't had much game time to really enjoy them recently but it never ceases to amaze me when I get a quick gaming session in here or there. I have been recording some footage and putting it up on Youtube and I plan to add a lot more footage this summer, so keep your eyes peeled. If you have any video requests, please let me know and I will do what I can.

Here is the best picture I have managed to take so far. It was back in February but I am still very happy with how it turned out.


Again, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I will do my best to help others where I can.

Anyone know why there's no record of someone debezeling a u2412m? I'd have thought it has the same casing and floating box setup as the u2312hm so it shouldn't be that difficult should it?

It should be very similar.

Anyone know why there's no record of someone debezeling a u2412m? I'd have thought it has the same casing and floating box setup as the u2312hm so it shouldn't be that difficult should it?

I have been planning to de-bezel my 2412's for a while now but just got around to it.
Everything is the same as in the first post until you come to remove the silver outer bezel. It doesn't have screws and they have done the trick of melting plastic rivets to hold it in place. Pretty annoying as you would have to shatter each plastic rivet and there are a lot of them. At that point I stopped disassembly as breaking the rivets would mean the silver plastic would never sit right again and definitely void the warranty.

Looks like my bezels are staying on :(