PC monitor: no sound - what to do?

If you don't hear any sound even though your PC monitor has built-in boxes, there can be many reasons. We'll show you what you can do about it here.

No sound: the right cable on the PC monitor?

If you want to transfer the sound from your PC to your monitor or external boxes, you need a cable that supports audio transmission:

The three common cable connections are HDMI, DVI and VGA. However, only the HDMI cable can transmit the sound directly.
For the other two connections you have to connect a separate cable between PC and monitor for sound transmission. Most of these cables are very thin and have a 3.5 mm jack connection at both ends. You can usually get this for little money in online mail order shops and in every electronics store.
The jack cable must be connected to the green jack connection on your PC. There should only be a suitable connector on your monitor.
If you have connected all cables correctly and the sound is still not working, there may be a software problem.

In many cases the driver of your sound card is not installed correctly. In the next practical tip, read how you can check in the device manager whether the sound card is installed.
However, if the sound card is recognized and the sound is still not transmitted, you should reinstall the driver. First use the Windows board tools.
If that doesn't work either, your sound card needs its own special driver. In the device manager you will first find out which manufacturer your card is from. For the popular provider Realtek you get the right driver here. If your sound card comes from another manufacturer, you have to find the right driver. In this practical tip, we explain how to do this.
It is also possible that your sound card is defective. You can find out how to check this in this practical tip.

Once you've fixed the problem, you can then get the most out of your sound card.