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Help with multi monitors?

  • #1
  • First Post: Sep 16, 2011 3:59pm Sep 16, 2011 3:59pm
Hopefully you guys can help me out here, Recently I decided to add 1 or 2 extra monitors to my PC. While looking around the web, I discovered that a local business had replaced their computers and had 4 identical 15" flat screens for sale at £10 each!. So i bought them all.

Now the technical part-

I have managed to get 2 running, 1 by adding a graphics card(Gigabyte GV-N84S-512I GeForce 8400GS 512 MB ATX HDMI Graphics Card), which supports 2 and the other via a USB to VGA adaptor.

I guess the question is how to get the other two running without spending a fortune?

Should I get another 2 USB-VGA adaptors?

Or add a second graphics card? I am not sure if my computer will take another one of these or have the power to run it. It is a dell studio 540 32-bit with 4GB ram.

It has 1 PCI express slot which has now been filled with the new graphics card and 1 PCI slot which is empty.

Also there is the old VGA connector which is not working since adding the graphics card. I don't think there is a way to get this to work?

Hopefully you have some ideas and advice.

Thanks,

John

PS. I am not great at computers so please speak English! lol
Attached Image (click to enlarge)
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  • #2
  • Sep 16, 2011 8:48pm Sep 16, 2011 8:48pm
You have a pretty cool set-up. I'm not a "tech slut" either so my answer was just to buy a second computer. After the 2nd monitor I wasn't sure if my PC could handle it (a 3rd).

Anyways..... do a google for Heartland America. They have some PC's that "meet factory spec's" and are most likely sold after a lease expires (from business's). I grabbed an extra Dell PC that has been running for a couple of years now without a hitch. It was "cheap". That's OK woih with me.
  • #3
  • Sep 16, 2011 10:58pm Sep 16, 2011 10:58pm
Quoting egadsforex
You have a pretty cool set-up. I'm not a "tech slut" either so my answer was just to buy a second computer. After the 2nd monitor I wasn't sure if my PC could handle it (a 3rd).

Anyways..... do a google for Heartland America. They have some PC's that "meet factory spec's" and are most likely sold after a lease expires (from business's). I grabbed an extra Dell PC that has been running for a couple of years now without a hitch. It was "cheap". That's OK woih with me.
Definitely buy another computer. They're dirt cheap now days. The second one you will have hooked up to at least two of those bad boys for back up, and your records, testing, research.. etc.

Take a look at a kvm switch too, might give you some ideas.

Cheers!
  • #4
  • Sep 16, 2011 11:44pm Sep 16, 2011 11:44pm
Haven't a clue sorry Highlander! About to have the same issue hence my interest in your thread. I have a laptop but am about to buy a dedicated desktop for trading. Find desktops more reliable as they suffer less abuse but laptops obviously have their advantages as well.

Sorry to sound like a real pita but have been asking myself the following. You need to have redundancy in your system for business continuity and disaster recovery. Fancy IT terms for if you only have one computer and it crashes while you are trading, what are you going to do? Have not experienced a hardware failure yet but have had several internet connection worries that have really shaken me.

BTW, do you speak gaelic like my highland ancestors. Slioch phionnan - or something like that.
Audentes Fortuna Juvat
  • #5
  • Sep 17, 2011 12:57am Sep 17, 2011 12:57am
it depends on too many things. The easiest is to buy a new pc.

If you want everything to go into 1 box, you need to be computer savvy (unfortunately)

But mostly:
1)check if your motherboard can support 2 graphic cards.
2)IF it can, then you can go ahead and get another graphic card and plug your monitors into that.

this is a good guide. But again, you need some lvl of computer know how to.
http://realtimesoft.com/multimon/guide/
  • #6
  • Sep 17, 2011 5:07am Sep 17, 2011 5:07am
Quoting thelws
it depends on too many things. The easiest is to buy a new pc.

If you want everything to go into 1 box, you need to be computer savvy (unfortunately)

But mostly:
1)check if your motherboard can support 2 graphic cards.
2)IF it can, then you can go ahead and get another graphic card and plug your monitors into that.

this is a good guide. But again, you need some lvl of computer know how to.
http://realtimesoft.com/multimon/guide/
Thanks for the info,

I think my computer will support two cards but not of the same type. The modern PCI express cards are the most common it seems, but my computer only has the 1 express port. But it also has 1 PCI (not express) port which will take a graphics card also. Its just knowing which one to buy? I have been trawling the web and like most things there is a fair bit of disagreement as to what can be done. Some say you need two cards the same make, others say you don't. Leaving me even more confused!

But I have found a PCI card which would fit in this port of the same make as the one I have just put in the express port. But I don't know if it will work???
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  • #7
  • Sep 17, 2011 5:13am Sep 17, 2011 5:13am
Quoting Nijee
Haven't a clue sorry Highlander! About to have the same issue hence my interest in your thread. I have a laptop but am about to buy a dedicated desktop for trading. Find desktops more reliable as they suffer less abuse but laptops obviously have their advantages as well.

Sorry to sound like a real pita but have been asking myself the following. You need to have redundancy in your system for business continuity and disaster recovery. Fancy IT terms for if you only have one computer and it crashes while you are trading, what are you going to...
I do know much gaelic, my father knows a little, its more the west coast where all the gaelic speakers are.

If you are looking to buy a new computer I suggest you go to a shop and get the guys there to set up your computer to run however many monitors you want, I've spent hours this week trying to figure this out lol
  • #8
  • Sep 17, 2011 5:16am Sep 17, 2011 5:16am
Quoting orderphlow
Definitely buy another computer. They're dirt cheap now days. The second one you will have hooked up to at least two of those bad boys for back up, and your records, testing, research.. etc.

Take a look at a kvm switch too, might give you some ideas.

Cheers!
Thanks for the info, I do actually have a laptop as well which can run a monitor but If i could i would like to run all these on the one PC
  • #9
  • Edited 5:39am Sep 17, 2011 5:23am | Edited 5:39am
i suppose you ned to have the Matrox TripleHead2Go.
http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/

one connector from videocard to 1 monitor
other output from videocard to matrox to connect 3 monitors

or buy two of those, and connect 6 monitors

P.S. you can't use a pci-e AND pci videocard at the same time. if you have 2 PCI (not express) slots, then you could buy two cheap ass matrox g450's on ebay perhaps. 2 screens on each card.

or buy multiple usb vga videocards like this: http://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-Externa.../dp/B000NJFJJK
  • #10
  • Sep 17, 2011 5:32am Sep 17, 2011 5:32am
Quoting ido370
i suppose you ned to have the Matrox TripleHead2Go.
http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/

one connector from videocard to 1 monitor
other output from videocard to matrox to connect 3 monitors

or buy two of those, and connect 6 monitors
Yeah I did look at these but they're a bit above what I'm prepared to spend, hopefully I can find a solution which is cheaper. Like i said the monitors cost me £10 each so that's the sort of ball park i'm working in lol
  • #11
  • Sep 28, 2011 5:42am Sep 28, 2011 5:42am
I have a 4 monitor setup on one PC. It's an older setup but it works very well.
My mothrboard (Asus P4E-Deluxe) has 2 PCI-e X16 slots each populated with an Nvidia GeForce 7300GT
You can easily get a much better and faster motherboard with dual PCI-e x16 slots and newer NVidia or ATI video processors to have a similar setup yet packing a lot more performance.
If you haven't already found a good solution, let me know and I'll do some research for you. I am an IT consultant so advice you get from me will be pro quality... or so my clients tell me
Cheers
Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it
  • #12
  • Last Post: Sep 28, 2011 6:06am Sep 28, 2011 6:06am
Hello,

I have gone through this myself.

But honestly speaking, instead of trying to setup all the monitors on one PC I would suggest following setup.

Buy a secondhand PC from ebay or so, with a decent graphics card, nothing high end, just something which has either dual vga output or vga/hdmi or dual hdmi outputs.

You can surely get hold of cheap split cables for vga and hdmi from ebay again.

When you have two outputs, you can use two split cables ( each with two outputs ) giving you total of 4 monitors on each computer. You might not need this many.


This way you would be able to make sure your computer efficiency is not compromised. When you analyse data or have live charts running, the streaming takes up some computer efficiency, at times affecting performance of Java scripts or flash or softwares which are used for execution.


I have put all my analysis on one PC which is bit powerful compared to the other one, which is not that 'mean' machine, but is decent enough for execution.

Also, added advantage is that just incase, something goes wrong with the PC, you still have another machine running, which won't disrupt your activities and won't mess up the mood.


Regards,
gj6n68
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