Lets say i want to build a PC with 4 Monitors !! what do i need ?

NeVeR

Hi all,

A friend of mine asked me to see what it would cost to build a pc to take 4 monitors..

I've built a few PC's before for 2 monitors ,, but not 4.. So i'm not sure on whats needed... I know i'll need 2 graphics cards or 1 with 4 x dvi..

Lets say the 4 Monitors will be 24" full res.

what do i need?
Can it be done for under €800 ? (not including monitors of course)

Cheers

Solitaire

I'll assume this is nothing to do with gaming and we're talking cheapo 1080p 24"ers (not la-la-land ones with 2560*1600!), so...

If you don't mind one or two monitors being hooked up to VGA then there's a dead cheap option available: if you can find a cheap HD3450 lurking online, simply plug it into a RS7** chipset mobo and enable Hybrid CrossFire. Two HD3*** and four monitors all synched. Voila

If you insist on all being digital... blargh. No idea why though... VGA isn't that evil on a secondary monitor! If the displays can be unsynched you can just get a cheap CF or SLI mobo (doesn't matter if obe of the slots is x4) and simultaneously run two seperate adaptors with two screens each. But if the screens do need to be all on the same adaptor (unlikely) then as cheapo cards don't have CF and HybridCF options are limited you're really talking either the cheapest CF/SLI-capable cards you can find or something ungodly expensive for a header with a full set of 4 DVI ports *cough*HD4850X2*cough*

NeVeR

It's not for gaming, But he would like to play some games.. Doesnt need to be full spec..

lets say they all needed to be DVI. Can you post what parts i need
mobo
CPU
PSU
RAM
grafhics card(s)

cheers.. I just need to get a picture of whats needed,,, as in what watt power supply is needed for something like this ?.. would a normal quad core CPU do ?.. would i need more RAM then normal etc,

cheers.

Solitaire

I'd recommend an asymmetrical unsynched setup with two monitors going to at the very least a HD4850 (preferably a HD4890 if he really wants to game on such hugeass monitors ) and the two secondaries going to the cheapest (modern) dual-DVI card out there (prolly a HD4350 variant of some kind). Mobo can be anything that has two PCIex16 slots, even if one of them is crippled to x4 electrically, as the HD4350 doesn't need much bandwidth at all and its certainly not synched to the other card in any kind of CF arrangement

As for CPU... that wholly depends on what you're running on the four monitors. The graphics cards deal with the display generation, but odds are if you have enough program instances to need four monitors there's a fiar bit of multitasking going on in there somewhere... If its coding or something some extra grunt in the CPU department is nice but if its four browser windows obviously the only tricky part is getting the four DVI ports together

I'll hold off a spec until I find out exactly what your mate wants to do with the PC and what on earth he's doing with all those monitors

NeVeR

He's a pro poker player and wants to multi table.. But he's also into his games..

He loves movies as well...

He's a graphic designer as well.. and will use the PC for that.. But mainly Poker,

Solitaire

Oh, poo...

Really he could do with RAID5 and/or a decent-sized SSD for his databases but that probably won't be happening on this budget...

Random stab:



This leaves €170 for all system storage. Not an issue on any normal system... but poker pros are very particular about their storage as its usually a far bigger bottleneck to them than the CPU or GPU! €170 for HDD+SSD or HDD+ lots-of-little-HDDs-for-RAID5 ain't a lot of money. Plus a whole heap of 3.5" HDDs eats a fair whack of power, and MLC flash is not great for databasing (literally gets shredded over time by constant I/O and small writes :eek: ) and 2.5" HDDs cost more for the same storage (the main reason its feasible is because HWVS have dirt-cheap 320GB 2.5" Seagates for €43!)

Of course, during the course of his graphic design your friend may use Photoshop. At which point I can bin the AMD build and your mate can kiss any poker-friendly storage solution goodbye as the Intel build will be a lot pricier. Good time to say: Intel build coming tomorrow. Right now I need... BED. :rolleyes:

Solitaire

Okay, here's an Intel build to keep the dogs of Photoshop at bay



This leaves... €85 for storage. Arse. You can stick in a 1TB HDD and still keep under budget but there's just no scope for RAID5 or SSDs whatsoever. And before you ask, dropping back to a 2.66GHz C2Q/LGA775 setup will only save a pathetic €30 HWVS' lack of cheap multi-PCIe mobos is the deciding factor there, so the fairly expensive nature of P55 mobos aren't even much of an issue this time around.

Let's hope your friend can put up with slow databasing for his poker... or doesn't use Photoshop

NeVeR

Hey Thanks.

I was talking to my mate and he would rather Intel, Also I've convinced him to spend €1000 / €1100

Whats the main factor when building a machine to take 4 monitors?

Solitaire

None, other than making sure you have four video outputs (of the desired type) and also enough CPU grunt to deal with the added multitasking. After all, there's no real CPU overhead for running the monitors themselves (that's the GPUs' job, and running 2D screens is nothing for them), its the fact that you, oh, might want to use them for something and that's what's going to take up system resources :P