Topic: Build Your Own PC - Multiple Displays

[El Campeador]

Does anyone here build their own PCs?

I've been putting together my primary home PC about every 2 years for about the last 12 years now. The advantages of building your own include full customization, lower overall price, higher performance, fine-tuning of components, and not having to pay for things you aren't going to use.

It's time for another refresh. I've got another week off, and there's 17 fucking inches of snow outside. I'm sick of debating simpletons in the main forum, so I'm going to instead channel my energy towards the design and procurement of a new PC.

My focus this time will be on multiple-display technology. I've often found myself switching between work apps, internet browsers, television windows, and full-screen apps, with a whole array of other eclectic applications like online poker tables and stock charts spinning in windows. A single monitor - even one as large as my 24" Dell fpw - simply doesn't have enough real estate. More monitor space means more productivity, but there are diminishing returns - even though I got excited at the thought of grabbing 2 ATI cards in Crossfire mode and hanging a wall of 6 monitors up, I think that's overkill. I'd probably need to take a few steps back.

Of course, when gaming this would be sick



however, I'm not that much of a gamer, and when I do play games, they're mostly slower, strategy based games. Also, in a six monitor formation, the cost would get out of hand really quickly (I'd be looking at $2500 for the screens, custom stands, and video cards alone). Even so, one smart way to go about this would be to get a Radeon Crossfire-compatible card and a big enough power supply to give myself the option of adding a sister-card (doubling up) and upgrading to six screens. But I'll start with three.

I found this picture of a well-organized workstation featuring three "floating" monitors. That, in a nutshell, is my goal this time around.




To enable properly supported multi-display, I'm going with an ATI Radeon HD series graphics card. ATI has a technology call Eyefinity, which enables multi-display support up to three monitors, and a technology called Crossfire, which enables multiple Radeon HD cards to operate in tandem. For my limited multi-display needs, I'm going with something like this to save a few bucks:



It ticks the right boxes - 1GB of DDR5 memory, fast core clock speed, DirectX 11 support, 2xDVI, 1xHDMI, and 1xDisplayPort. Good reviews on Newegg, and a lot of them, which signifies market penetration. Runs quiet, they say, and stays cool. I'd like to have it shipped for $99 or under.

So there you have it. I'll keep updating the thread with the other components (motherboard, power supply, memory, drives etc) as I do the research. If anyone has done this and has any advice, please feel free to jump in

[SMD]

Get F1 2010, get a full wheel set up then invite me over.

[owens_2k]

I dont like the unavoidable black bars you will get using 3 monitors, why dont you get one of those widescreen curved monitors?

[Buzz Killington]

Post some pictures when it's done.

I tried building my own PC but gave up, all the guides assumed I knew a lot about it when really I'm a newb.

[cim-pim-param]

Ive recently started building my new pc as well, but has no moneyz for a new motherboard and I think I would rather get a projector for the price of monitors and because this is way out of my league.
GL!

[El Campeador]

I dont like the unavoidable black bars you will get using 3 monitors, why dont you get one of those widescreen curved monitors?

I've had a dual-monitor setup at work for the past few years, and it doesn't bother me at all, mostly because a majority of the time sees me using separate applications on separate screens. Only rarely do I pan one window across multiple monitors, and when I do, it's not so bad at all.

If you mean one of these when you says curved widescreen monitors -



It's because

- They're six thousand dollars each,
- You get higher resolution with 2 separate monitors than with the one I pictured above,
- The native aspect ratio is weird,
- They're new and probably buggy.

[SMD]

Post some pictures when it's done.

I tried building my own PC but gave up, all the guides assumed I knew a lot about it when really I'm a newb.

Building your own PC is really, really, really easy. The trick is in getting all the parts to work in a way that none of them really bottlenecks the rest.

[El Campeador]

Building your own PC is really, really, really easy. The trick is in getting all the parts to work in a way that none of them really bottlenecks the rest.

Whatever, Mac Boy 

[SMD]

Whatever, Mac Boy 

First thing I do when I buy a place is go nuts with a home computer.

[Buzz Killington]

Any noob friendly guides?

[SMD]

Any noob friendly guides?

If you have to press hard to put it in, it probably doesn't go there. And that's advice for life, not just PC building.

[El Campeador]

Any noob friendly guides?

http://www.tomshardware.com/theme-build-your-own,156.html

Once you read through a bunch of different system configurations, the picture becomes clearer.

[Bob Loblaw]

Any noob friendly guides?

http://www.pcityourself.com/index.php

It really is a piece of piss. Just a matter of becoming familiar with the parts that make up your PC. Taking apart and putting your current PC back together would be a good place to start imo.

[iSmiff]

don't screw your motherboard to your case without putting in the screws provided to raise the motherboard up about half a cm


this is good advice and would have served me well when i built my first pc about 10 years ago

[SMD]

don't screw your motherboard to your case without putting in the screws provided to raise the motherboard up about half a cm


this is good advice and would have served me well when i built my first pc about 10 years ago

Did it smell good?

[Sir Harvest Fields]

why is it sick? does it have a virus already built in???

[Neoto]

I build my own PC's. I've currently got a Q6600 running at 3.2GHz, 4GB RAM and a XFX HD5850 graphics card. I have 2 of the 3 monitors I need for the Eyefinity setup that I'm hoping to achieve sometime in the new year. Saving for a 3rd one and then I'll have the wide screen setup I want. Bezel's are a bit thick on the monitors I currently have but it will have to do.

Here's how my setup currently looks:



It's a little bit of a mess at the moment. The 3rd monitor will go in front of the tower to the left of the HP monitor in the middle. HD5850's are getting really cheap now so I might get a second one for crossfire purposes. Would save me having to buy a Display Port ready monitor of which there aren't that many in a 21.5" size. Monitors are all mounted to the desk extension thing I knocked up. Frees up so much space on your desk. Once it's all setup I'll be cable tidying everything and making it all look a bit nicer.

Looking to upgrade the CPU, motherboard and the RAM... just holding out for those new Sandybridge Intel processors I think, then I'll overclock the bugger and I think I'll be set for a little while for gaming heh. Oh yes and I put a bright blue light in the main tower haha!

[Chakan]

This is mine.



2 22inch monitors.

Intel® Core™ i7-975 processor Extreme Edition(8MB L3 Cache, 3.33GHz)
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 4 DIMMs

And about 2TB of space.

[Buzz Killington]

http://www.pcityourself.com/index.php

It really is a piece of piss. Just a matter of becoming familiar with the parts that make up your PC. Taking apart and putting your current PC back together would be a good place to start imo.

http://www.tomshardware.com/theme-build-your-own,156.html

Once you read through a bunch of different system configurations, the picture becomes clearer.

Thanks 

[iSmiff]

This is mine.



2 22inch monitors.

Intel® Core™ i7-975 processor Extreme Edition(8MB L3 Cache, 3.33GHz)
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 4 DIMMs

And about 2TB of space.

you'd think with the money you laid out on the hardware that you could afford a desk

[iSmiff]

Did it smell good?

the smoke was the first sign that something wasn't right

[Sir Harvest Fields]

you'd think with the money you laid out on the hardware that you could afford a desk

just what i was thinking hahahahaha

[Chakan]

you'd think with the money you laid out on the hardware that you could afford a desk

The desk was there before the computer, besides a desk is a desk.

[SMD]

the smoke was the first sign that something wasn't right

I'm surprised there was time between the smoke and the bang.

[El Campeador]

I build my own PC's. I've currently got a Q6600 running at 3.2GHz, 4GB RAM and a XFX HD5850 graphics card. I have 2 of the 3 monitors I need for the Eyefinity setup that I'm hoping to achieve sometime in the new year. Saving for a 3rd one and then I'll have the wide screen setup I want. Bezel's are a bit thick on the monitors I currently have but it will have to do.

Here's how my setup currently looks:

It's a little bit of a mess at the moment. The 3rd monitor will go in front of the tower to the left of the HP monitor in the middle. HD5850's are getting really cheap now so I might get a second one for crossfire purposes. Would save me having to buy a Display Port ready monitor of which there aren't that many in a 21.5" size. Monitors are all mounted to the desk extension thing I knocked up. Frees up so much space on your desk. Once it's all setup I'll be cable tidying everything and making it all look a bit nicer.

Looking to upgrade the CPU, motherboard and the RAM... just holding out for those new Sandybridge Intel processors I think, then I'll overclock the bugger and I think I'll be set for a little while for gaming heh. Oh yes and I put a bright blue light in the main tower haha!

Thanks for the jumping in. Couple questions -

1. Are you gong Crossfire and doubling up your Radeons just to avoid getting a monitor with DisplayPort? Am I missing something, because you can get DisplayPort adapters?
2. Looks like you're using 2 separate arms/mounts for the monitors. Are you planning on grabbing a third one when the third screen shows up? Or will you upgrade to a 3-monitor stand/arm/mount?
3. I haven't gotten to comparing procs yet, but I rarely get the best component on the market, especially procs, since you pay a premium.

Oh and about 2 weeks ago, when I started mulling this over, the Mrs said NO BLUE LIGHTS

[Johnnyboy1973]

Anyone built one as a Home Theatre?

I question whether to do it or just buy a Popcorn Hour, Squeezebox and a 360

[Paul-LFC]

Anyone built one as a Home Theatre?

I question whether to do it or just buy a Popcorn Hour, Squeezebox and a 360

I haven't built one specifically as a home theatre, but I downloaded XBMC the other day, and honestly, it's probably worth just sticking that on a PC instead of buying dedicated streaming hardware. It's built to display in HD, so you can just plug the PC into a TV and it'll work fine.

Just point it at your videos folder and it'll show all of your films and TV shows. It also has plugins so you can stream videos from other sites like Youtube, TVCatchup, Netflix, Vimeo, GiantBomb, Revision3 and iPlayer.

It'll automatically fetch all the info for films and shows as well - DVD cover, description, IMDB rating, screenshots, directors, cast, etc.

There are a lot of different skins and layouts too, so you can set it up to look exactly how you want it to. I'm using the aeon65 skin at the moment, this is how the movies section looks:

[El Campeador]

Anyone built one as a Home Theatre?

Nah, I use my big fuckoff Sony Bravia XBR9 for that.

[El Campeador]

I think I've found the mounts. Cheetah Mounts ALAM.



VESA 100 compatible. Supports monitors up to 30lbs, which should be alright for my purposes. My current (old) 24" monitor weighs 16lbs; I can't imagine the new monitors weighing twice as much.

$15 each.

[Alpherah]

As a PC enthusiast i would strongly suggest you stay clear of a 5750 or such budget cards, after spending so much cash on 3 monitors it would be a shame to have a system which fails to utilise them at their proper resolution in games.
In modern titles even a single 5870 struggles.
And if your not gaming then you could save even more money and just get the cheapest eyefinity supported card at half the price.

[El Campeador]

As a PC enthusiast i would strongly suggest you stay clear of a 5750 or such budget cards, after spending so much cash on 3 monitors it would be a shame to have a system which fails to utilise them at their proper resolution in games.

So you'd suggest going up to the 6800 or 6900 series? The upgrade in performance and wow-factor is going to be there no matter what.

El Has No Need for Speed. I don't game at breakneck speeds for hours on end, but have a few applications (intense Java hogs, charting tools, network monitoring applications, video streams, plus 2-3 other separate things) going at lower resolutions than one spanned game with all the options ticked. Can it multitask, is my question to you.

There isn't a compelling reason to go up another $200-$400 (depending on one or two cards) to get the tail of the tiger instead of a lower-bracket powerhouse if you're not gaming, that we agree on for sure.

In modern titles even a single 5870 struggles.

So I'll play 2 year old games.

And if your not gaming then you could save even more money and just get the cheapest eyefinity supported card at half the price.

Half the price of the 5750 is $45. It's not much to futureproof it a bit for $45 not?

[reniformis]

Set up a 3 monitor display a couple of months ago, a 24" widescreen (16:9) flanked by two 19" (5:4) monitors. Mine was done rather cheaply because I already had a MoBo with onboard ATI graphics and a separate ATI card. A MoBo feature called 'ATI SurroundView' lets me run both the onboard and discrete ATI cards concurrently to power up to four monitors, so I'm running the two side panels from the onboard and the main panel (the one I use for graphic intensive stuff like gaming and video editing) from the much more powerful discrete card. I don't think nVidia has anything like this. It isn't perfect (I can only have two DVI outputs, the other has to be analogue for example) but it does what I need and only cost me £80 for two used 19" monitors off ebay to set up.

[Neoto]

Thanks for the jumping in. Couple questions -

1. Are you gong Crossfire and doubling up your Radeons just to avoid getting a monitor with DisplayPort? Am I missing something, because you can get DisplayPort adapters?
2. Looks like you're using 2 separate arms/mounts for the monitors. Are you planning on grabbing a third one when the third screen shows up? Or will you upgrade to a 3-monitor stand/arm/mount?
3. I haven't gotten to comparing procs yet, but I rarely get the best component on the market, especially procs, since you pay a premium.

Oh and about 2 weeks ago, when I started mulling this over, the Mrs said NO BLUE LIGHTS

1. I checked out the prices of said displayport adapters and the type needed to work with crossfire costs almost £100... secondly the dramatic increase in actual screen resolution when operating 3 or more monitors would probably require a second card in order to get newer titles to run with high frame rates on high settings. When we consider the fact that a HD5850 costs £130 or so it makes absolutely no sense in getting a displayport converter.

2. I'm using two vogel mounts for the monitors at the moment. I haven't really thought about whether I want to get a 3 monitor stand, but if I did there could be problems as the mounting sockets on my LG monitor are at a different height to the HP one. I'd likely just get another Vogel bracket or maybe something else with a bit more freedom of movement (I can't remember the correct word for this heh).

3. I spent a fair bit of time comparing processors and stuff recently as I built a couple of machines for my brother. From what I can see it's not worth getting an i7, if you consider the cost to performance ratio. They also draw more power and as a result, run a bit hotter. They're good if you need to run triple channel and if you are deffo going to run a dual graphics setup. I'm going to run a dual graphics setup but I really cannot justify the cost, so I'm plumping for something from the i5 range; i5-760. From what I've seen on other forums they tend to overclock reasonably well and they're not going to break the bank in terms of cost. I am holding out to see what offerings they have when Sandybridge stuff hits in the new year, so we'll see what's best then in terms of cost to performance. Another processor worth looking at is the i3-540. Those things can be overclocked on air to 4GHz. Just need a decent motherboard and CPU cooler to go with it!

Regarding blue lights, mine comes with a little switch box that lets me turn them off. So you could put them in and turn them on when she's not around hah!

[Neoto]

So you'd suggest going up to the 6800 or 6900 series? The upgrade in performance and wow-factor is going to be there no matter what.

El Has No Need for Speed. I don't game at breakneck speeds for hours on end, but have a few applications (intense Java hogs, charting tools, network monitoring applications, video streams, plus 2-3 other separate things) going at lower resolutions than one spanned game with all the options ticked. Can it multitask, is my question to you.

There isn't a compelling reason to go up another $200-$400 (depending on one or two cards) to get the tail of the tiger instead of a lower-bracket powerhouse if you're not gaming, that we agree on for sure.

So I'll play 2 year old games.

Half the price of the 5750 is $45. It's not much to futureproof it a bit for $45 not?

If your intention is to crossfire off one card, at least get something like a HD5850 or one the 6900 cards. For desktop applications the 5750 will be fine, but for gaming, it might struggle a bit. Another thing I'd like to point out is that you get yourself a decent PSU. I have a Corsair TX 650 Watt one myself which runs fine with the OC'd CPU, 6 hard drives and the HD5850. When I get the second card I'll be upgrading the PSU to its bigger brother which offers 750 Watts.

[El Campeador]

1. I checked out the prices of said displayport adapters and the type needed to work with crossfire costs almost £100... secondly the dramatic increase in actual screen resolution when operating 3 or more monitors would probably require a second card in order to get newer titles to run with high frame rates on high settings. When we consider the fact that a HD5850 costs £130 or so it makes absolutely no sense in getting a displayport converter.

Yeah figured as much. Although the prices are a bit cheaper in the States, you're right - get two cards instead of a converter.

2. I'm using two vogel mounts for the monitors at the moment. I haven't really thought about whether I want to get a 3 monitor stand, but if I did there could be problems as the mounting sockets on my LG monitor are at a different height to the HP one. I'd likely just get another Vogel bracket or maybe something else with a bit more freedom of movement (I can't remember the correct word for this heh).

You're raised an issue I've been confronted with over the last 24 hours - mixing and matching monitors or starting over.

I have a Dell 2405fpw - a sick monitor - but an older version, which has no HDMI input or DisplayPort, although it does have an array of other inputs. Acquiring two more of these suckers will set me back a grand, although they do come with all inputs I would need, and would look sharpish.

Alternatively, I could re-deploy this Dell 2405 somewhere else in the house, and get 3 brand new monitors, lower end ones that could potentially cost me south of $400 for three of them. Or I could go for an HDTV screen with tuner built in at $225 each, still vastly cheaper than buying 2 more Dell 2405FPWs.

I'd like the option of watching tv on one, two or all of them, and ideally, potentially watching different channels on all of them.. What would that take, anyone? Would it require a TV tuner in each monitor? Would it require splitting the cable-company input into three and connecting them to each monitor? Is there a way to input HDTV signal into the PC and then display it across one, two or three monitors? If so, what would be doing the tuning?

3. I spent a fair bit of time comparing processors and stuff recently as I built a couple of machines for my brother. From what I can see it's not worth getting an i7, if you consider the cost to performance ratio. They also draw more power and as a result, run a bit hotter. They're good if you need to run triple channel and if you are deffo going to run a dual graphics setup. I'm going to run a dual graphics setup but I really cannot justify the cost, so I'm plumping for something from the i5 range; i5-760. From what I've seen on other forums they tend to overclock reasonably well and they're not going to break the bank in terms of cost. I am holding out to see what offerings they have when Sandybridge stuff hits in the new year, so we'll see what's best then in terms of cost to performance. Another processor worth looking at is the i3-540. Those things can be overclocked on air to 4GHz. Just need a decent motherboard and CPU cooler to go with it!

Haven't got to the motherboard and the procs yet. Since I'm focusing this project on a visual platform, I want to validate the multi-display concept before diving into peripherals. But I'll come back to it.

Basically, it'd be easy to spunk a lot of cash and build a state of the art gaming machine. But that's not what I'm after.

[Neoto]

You're raised an issue I've been confronted with over the last 24 hours - mixing and matching monitors or starting over.

I have a Dell 2405fpw - a sick monitor - but an older version, which has no HDMI input or DisplayPort, although it does have an array of other inputs. Acquiring two more of these suckers will set me back a grand, although they do come with all inputs I would need, and would look sharpish.

Alternatively, I could re-deploy this Dell 2405 somewhere else in the house, and get 3 brand new monitors, lower end ones that could potentially cost me south of $400 for three of them. Or I could go for an HDTV screen with tuner built in at $225 each, still vastly cheaper than buying 2 more Dell 2405FPWs.

I'd like the option of watching tv on one, two or all of them, and ideally, potentially watching different channels on all of them.. What would that take, anyone? Would it require a TV tuner in each monitor? Would it require splitting the cable-company input into three and connecting them to each monitor? Is there a way to input HDTV signal into the PC and then display it across one, two or three monitors? If so, what would be doing the tuning?

I don't know what your exact setup is regarding TV, but if you mentioned cable so I'm assuming some kind of box is involved here between the cable from the wall and the TV. As far as I'm aware you'd need 3 of these boxes each going into the separate monitors (could be pricey). How this is accomplished depends on the inputs on the back of your cable box and the inputs on your monitor. Worst case scenario, you'd need to buy an additional scan box or something to go between monitor and the cable box. If you just wanted to watch TV from channels available over the aerial you could get 3 monitors with built in tuners like my LG one. The model I have is (LG Flatron M227WD) 21.5", 1920x1080 resolution, has an array of inputs and cost less than £200.

Personally if I had the money, for a setup like this I'd buy 3 brand new identical monitors with thin bezels. Come to think of it, if i could afford to buy 3 new ones I'd probably go all out and do a 6 monitor Eyefinity setup

Regarding what you currently have, it might be cheaper to get 3 slightly smaller monitors and relocate the other one to another room. I'm not a fan of using TV displays as monitors as I don't think the image from them is particularly brilliant when you compare it to a dedicated computer monitor (the LG model I have is advertised/listed as monitor which happens to have a TV tuner in it... not the other way around).

Haven't got to the motherboard and the procs yet. Since I'm focusing this project on a visual platform, I want to validate the multi-display concept before diving into peripherals. But I'll come back to it.

Basically, it'd be easy to spunk a lot of cash and build a state of the art gaming machine. But that's not what I'm after.

If you're not after a super duper speedy machine you won't go wrong with an i3. Just get a nice motherboard like the Asus P7P55Q and you're sorted. Don't bother with Triple channel either. Dual channel RAM will serve you just fine.

[iSmiff]

i'm running an i5 overclocked to 4.61

[Neoto]

i'm running an i5 overclocked to 4.61

What motherboard and CPU exactly? That's a hefty overclock... is that on air as well?

[iSmiff]

Intel Core i5 665k CPU  - Socket LGA1156
Scythe Mugen 2 Rev.B CPU Cooler
Gigabyte GA-H55-UD3H Intel H55 DDR3 Crossfire ATX HDMI Motherboard
Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM Memory


http://www.awd-it.co.uk/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=8927

[Neoto]

Ah thats the same cooler that I have. I keep seeing that Gigabyte board being used for overclocking purposes. I'm assuming its all stable?