Dual 1440P or 4K monitors with Intel Integrated Graphics

WD41

New member
Hello -

I want to build a PC for software development. The most important requirements are:
1) Must support 2 monitors, each at least 1440P, preferably 4K. Will not be used for gaming, so refresh rate is not important to me.
2) It will run all the time, so I'd like to use integrated graphics rather than a discrete graphics cards, to minimise power consumption.

Questions:
1) Do I need to select a motherboard with a Display Port adaptor for this, such as:
ROG STRIX B250H GAMING
Gigabyte AORUS Z270X-Gaming 7
2) Will a 7th or 8th generation i3 or i5 processor be sufficient (refresh rate not important to me)?
3) Anything else I need to consider?
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
I'd make similar comments to those made in your previous thread https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/foru...-dual-monitors&p=391597&viewfull=1#post391597 i.e. that for 2 x 4k monitors you'll want two DP and/or HDMI 2.0 outputs (and if HDMI 2.0, make sure the monitor's HDMI input is also HDMI 2.0).

You may therefore want/need a low end GPU.

Different models of the same GPU can have different display outputs. There are Geforce 1030s out there with 1 x DP 1.4 and 1x HDMI 2.0b, but the ones PCS sell seem to be HDMI/DVI only. So you could buy and fit your own. The cheapest DP + HDMI card PCS sell seems to be the RX 550 (AMD equivalent to Geforce 1030) but you'd want to check what version of HDMI it has before you start running a 4k monitor off it.

I believe you can use integrated graphics to power one monitor and the GPU's graphics to power another. So in principle you could use the motherboard's displayport to run 1 monitor and the GPU's displayport to run the other. I haven't actually done this myself though.

From what I can tell, the motherboards' HDMI outputs are only 1.4 - so even though any of the CPUs you mention should be capable of running a pair of 4k monitors, the motherboard's video outputs won't.

I know you say you don't care about refresh rate, but if you use HDMI 1.4 or DVI to run a 4k monitor it will only run at ~33fps. This is considered unusable. I've read that this is considered unusable. Having personally used a desktop running at under 60fps, it's like trying to use a computer if the computer was drunk. You move the mouse and the cursor slowly blips across the screen, not really stopping where you expect it to... trying to get it to land on an icon to click it is relatively challenging. So you do want the monitors to be running at their native refresh rate of 60fps unless you like your work taking 3x as long.

What's your budget for the PC?
 
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