hooked up a good monitor to the graphics card (two outputs) and eventually the symptoms returned on the one while the other worked so knew it was not the card.
found an article on identifying bad capacitors on power supplies [they bulge at the top] along with some you tube videos of opening up monitors.
half dozen screws and couple of connectors later I found 3 capacitors that were bulging. $5 at radio shack and 30 min later monitor was back in action.
top photo is before.
