12 September 2025

Well I had bought a new 4k monitor to replace the TV , but getting it to work at 4k has been a bit of a trial as only two of the outputs on the computer will actually go that fast. On older cards I have had 4k out of the VGA port direct to a high res VGA monitor, but here I'm using a VGA to HDMI dongle which is limited to 1080P. Which of cause is all the TV needed even at VGA. So a nice Nvidia GT730 4 hdmi output was up to run out in an hour and only £30. Quick look at the spec and it says works to 3840x2160 which is what I need. It rolled up and of cause it only has a short PCI-E connector so straight away I knew I was on to a looser. Yes it works but the machine is pig slow, also plug a second 4k monitor in and it starts complaining. I suspect it would be happier with 4 HD monitors GIVING 3840x2160 desktop? So time to think again, so I took a walk around CeX as they always have a selection of cards. At £85 the GeForce GTX 1070 8Gb is not too bad a price and is quoting 7680 by 4320, so 4 times 4k. Only problem its only got one HDMI, the other three ports are DisplayPort. Not a problem as I already have the dongle on one cable and that came in a pack of two! So should be good to go. Plugged it in and fired up ... warning on screen ... power down and fit the PCI-E power lead. No paperwork with this and did not spot the big power connector at the other end of the board. Fortunately I had been forced to replace the power supply because of the motherboard power requirements, and so it was just a matter of finding where I had left the spare leads. It really is difficult getting into the space behind the power supply, but after a bit of jiggery pokery I got it plugged in, and powered up again. NOW I can see one screen, but the main desktop is restricted to 800x600! The graphics card does not like what the HDMI KVM is returning. I would have expected it to default to 1024x768 but it's obviously not useable. Swap monitor leads around and confirm that is the problem and then I realised I still had one of the old dummy display loop through dongles. That input now thinks it's a LINDY32103 but at least it's back at 4k the same as the ones either side! The added bonus is that when I switch to the servers the desktop machine now still thinks the main screen is attached so does not push stuff to the side screens. Wins all round, and now I have a desktop which is 11520 by 2160 although the third screen is only 27" rather than the 32" of the others. Now back to fixing the pdf handling I started before the postman came ...