Hello, you might be here because you accidentally yeeted an index controller into your monitor while breakdancing. No? You mean not everyone likes to breakdance in VR? Damn, color me surprised.
No matter, if for any reason you need to teardown an ASUS XG35VQ (or likely other asus ROG monitors, especially curved ones), you are in luck because here is going to be a semi-detailed teardown so that you will hopefully avoid a number of mistakes that I made on taking this POS apart.
One quick bit of information before we start is that the panel in this monitor is the M350QVR01.1
Removing the Plastic Casing
The first step is to remove the visible screws on the monitor. After taking off the monitor stand, there should be 4 inside the monitor stand area and 3 by the video inputs. Once that is done, you can remove the backing. Specifically, the front and side bezels stay on the monitor at this point. It is only the back part that comes off. It is secured with a bunch of nasty plastic clips. You can use guitar picks or other plastic objects of similar shape to slide around the bezel and remove these clips. You need to be gentle, but not that gentle because it is pretty strong plastic.
Be careful because there is a cable connecting the electronics on the plastic back to the main part of the monitor.
Make sure to remove the cable which connects the two together. It is just a simple white connector that I can’t be bothered to find a model for.
Here is the full back of the monitor in plane sight. We see the plastic side shroud as the large plastic piece there, a number of cables (the bottom right and left being backlight power delivery I believe) and the asus controller stuff in the center metal thingy.
Removing Bezel
Now we move on to removing the inside stuff. First, in the bottom right and bottom left corners of the display, remove the white cables. They are 6 pin cables that likely give backlight power according to the panel information.
After that, remove all of the black screws securing the large plastic bezel to the display. There are quite a few screws so make sure not to miss any. Once that is done, make sure to take a plastic spudger and slide it under the bottom part of the bezel. With this, we should be able to remove the size bezels. There are also some tape pieces which need to be removed as well, make sure to remove them carefully, but most can probably be replaced with electrical tape if necessary.
And here is what it looks like after the bezel is gone.
Removing ASUS Components
Once that is done, go ahead and unplug the central connector between the panel and the ASUS controller. This is likely the panel data and should come off fairly easy.
After that, there should be two screws and a couple strips of tape holding the ASUS controller to the panel. Remove the screws and carefully peel back the tape. Once that is done, you should be left with a fully free panel that can be replaced if you so desire. Or, if you are working on some other component, so be it
Like I gave above, the panel is the M350QVR01.1. I have also included the full barcode incase anyone finds that useful information.
Mainboard
To get to the mainboard, there is just 4 screws on the bottom of the PCB that can be removed and it pops right out.
This is the mainboard bottom, there isn’t that much interesting on here as far as my cursory glance went.
Here’s a sticker. idk why I thought it might be important, but here it is nonetheless.
Here is the top of the mainboard. Tis where all the goodies are located.
According to my analysis, it is a custom ASUS board. It has an AURA branded IC on it as well as one with an ASUS logo which likely handles input from the joysticks and maybe the OSD. These are the bottom right square ICS (which should be obvious from the picture). The left side of the PCB has the backlight power delivery which goes out the spaghetti-colored cables. The top left IC seems to be a USB controller for the onboard USB hub. The right side white connector is for the AURA lighting as well as the buttons on the monitor.
Conclusion
So do I recommend doing this to replace a panel? Sorta. It really isn’t that bad of a disassemble when you know what you’re doing (although I spent a lot of time trying to take off the front bezel before I realized that it was screwed in). However, this is quite an old monitor and I can only find $200 panel + $200 shipping ($400). For $200, I can find a 165Hz 1440p ultrawide which on paper is better than the ASUS one that I already have. Make sure to look for a proper replacement panel before you just immediately start disassembling the device. If you can find one however, go for it! I’m all about repairing your own devices.
I will make sure to update this post if I ever get around to replacing the panel. I probably won’t unless I can find one for around $200 which is unlikely, but at least I can share this teardown with the internet and increase the knowledge base.