Multi-monitor setup - how to make more stable

ss88

Weaksauce
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Dec 1, 2019
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System specs:
Dell XPS 8900
Core i7-6700 @ 4GHz
32gb DDR4 RAM
Intel HD Graphics 530 (integrated)
AMD Radeon RX 480 8gb
256gb SSD
2TB HDD

I have no monitors connected to the integrated graphics ports. I have the following 5 monitors (all at native resolutions) connected to the RX 480:
DP port 1: 1920x1200; daisy-chained 1080x1920 (portrait orientation)
DP port 2: 1920x1200
DP port 3: 1920x1080
HDMI port: 2160x3840 (portrait orientation)

This monitor configuration is somewhat unstable. When the computer wakes from sleep, sometimes all the monitors wake up, sometimes 1 will not wake (not always the same monitor) - I can usually wake the sleeping monitor by going into Windows 10 Display Settings, where Windows thinks the monitor is connected and awake, disable the monitor and then re-enable it. Even when the computer is running, very occasionally a monitor will drop out and go to sleep.

All the cables work fine with fewer monitors, so it's not obvious that it's a cable quality problem. But maybe when you're pushing the system, cable quality requirement is higher?

Is it possible this config is too much for the Radeon card? If that's the case, what is the best option for making this 5 monitor setup more stable? If possible, I'd like to add a 6th monitor.

I could move 1 or 2 monitors to the integrated graphics ports and enable integrated graphics in BIOS, but I'm guessing this is likely to result in BSOD's - this is what happened every week or so on my last couple of Dell XPS systems where I used both integrated and discrete graphics simultaneously.

Maybe add another card without large power requirements (so that I don't have to upgrade PSU from stock unit)? Maybe something like the Nvidia NVS 510?

Or should my current config work fine, if I use higher quality DisplayPort cables?
 
First solution is to not put your computer to sleep. Either leave it on or shut it down when not using it. Sleep mode just causes all kinds of nonsense and instability it's impossible to say what the cause is. Almost everyone I know who puts their computer to sleep rather than turn it off eventually has some sort of nagging issue with it they can't get to the bottom of.
 
First solution is to not put your computer to sleep. Either leave it on or shut it down when not using it.
While I acknowledge that sleep can cause issues, let's try for another solution. Neither of these is preferable to my current situation.
 
to wake up the sleeping monitor. just turn the monitor off and on again after the PC wakes up from sleep, this resets the monitor as DP monitors are plug and play, ie. they disconnect from the PC when they are powered off.
 
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to wake up the sleeping monitor. just turn the monitor off and on again after the PC wakes up from sleep, this resets the monitor as DP monitors are plug and play, ie. they disconnect from the PC when they are powered off.
My PG348Q doesn't, thankfully.
 
to wake up the sleeping monitor. just turn the monitor off and on again after the PC wakes up from sleep, this resets the monitor as DP monitors are plug and play, ie. they disconnect from the PC when they are powered off.
Thanks, I'll give this a try.
 
So you acknowledge the issue yet choose to ignore it? OK then GL
That's an oversimplification. I said sleep can cause issues; that doesn't mean the issue I'm experiencing cannot be resolved by means other than disabling sleep. Also, if you read the OP, I said sometimes a monitor will drop out even while the PC is running.

Anyway, appreciate your input, but as I said, your suggested solution is less appealing than my current situation.
 
with 5 different monitors and 3 different resolutions youre probably never gonna get it to sleep right. turn off sleep and just hit the power buttons on the monitors.
 
with 5 different monitors and 3 different resolutions youre probably never gonna get it to sleep right. turn off sleep and just hit the power buttons on the monitors.

Imo he should just have the displays sleep after 5-10 minutes. Would save from having to push all those power buttons just to get up and walk away.
 
Imo he should just have the displays sleep after 5-10 minutes. Would save from having to push all those power buttons just to get up and walk away.
yeah display sleep might work too. not worried about the buttons, that your own fault if you have 5 monitors ;) maybe a power bar for them to just flip the switch.
 
Imo he should just have the displays sleep after 5-10 minutes. Would save from having to push all those power buttons just to get up and walk away.
That's an option; certainly better than pressing power button on each monitor. Especially since my monitors are all Dell and those are known to have power buttons that fail (one of my monitors has a broken power button).
 
with 5 different monitors and 3 different resolutions youre probably never gonna get it to sleep right. turn off sleep and just hit the power buttons on the monitors.
Well I could consolidate down to 2 resolutions by replacing the 1920x1080 monitors with 1920x1200 monitors. But I'm guessing 2 resolutions - 1920x1200 and 3840x2160 on one card could still cause issues.
 
Well I could consolidate down to 2 resolutions by replacing the 1920x1080 monitors with 1920x1200 monitors. But I'm guessing 2 resolutions - 1920x1200 and 3840x2160 on one card could still cause issues.
from what ive seen over my many many years, the more they are mismatched the more likely there will be issues like this. think your simplest solution, if it works correctly, is the monitor sleep.
 
The NVS 510 only has 4 mini DP IIRC and I have never had great luck with daisy chaining displayport monitors. You may want to consider something like the NVS 810 that actually has enough outputs to not need to hack around it.

Do your 1080p monitors support a connection other than displayport? We had the same problem with one of our office PCs and the best fix was to just pickup a handful of dp to hdmi \ dvi cables. Once we took displayport out of the eqation everything worked fine.

As the others noted sleep mode is also a finicky mess. I personally would set sleep to never and leave turn off the display enabled. This generally works well and most modern PCs dont use much power at idle anyways.
 
The NVS 510 only has 4 mini DP IIRC and I have never had great luck with daisy chaining displayport monitors. You may want to consider something like the NVS 810 that actually has enough outputs to not need to hack around it.
Well I considering the NVS 510 as an additional card I'd add to the system which already has the AMD RX 480.

Or, if mixing Nvidia and AMD is wading into a hornet's nest of potential issues, then using 2 NVS 510's and removing the AMD card.
 
I'm running 3 monitors - 2x 4k60hz and 1x 1440p165hz

My solution was to make it so my computer never sleeps, i have power settings so that my monitors turn off but not my computer. Still, on reboots, I need to rearrange a few things every single damn time.

I've noticed that for whatever reason, having the leftmost monitor be primary tends to fix a lot of the random window moving around. I used to use software like displayfusion but it ended up causing more problems after a certain Windows 10 patch (a year or two ago?)

As for a monitor dropping out while the PC is running - change out the cable. That fixed that one for me. A cheap displayport cable would lose signal to my cheap 4k60 monitor for whatever reason. New cable, hasn't happened since. (Which is good, because I thought the Monitor was dieing before i decided to try a new cable.)
 
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As for a monitor dropping out while the PC is running - change out the cable. That fixed that one for me. A cheap displayport cable would lose signal to my cheap 4k60 monitor for whatever reason. New cable, hasn't happened since. (Which is good, because I thought the Monitor was dieing before i decided to try a new cable.)
Thanks. I haven't been closely tracking which monitor drops out with the PC running (other than noting that more than one does so), but going forward I will pay more attention and replace the cables for those monitors and see if it resolves that particular problem.
 
I use sleep all the time on all my computers, it works. I used to have 3 DP monitors, never had a problem. They were all the same model though.

That said, I have heard stories about issues with DP monitors specifically not waking up properly after sleep. Can you use HDMI instead? It might work better.

Also, I think a second GPU might also help. Probably stick with AMD since that is what you have, I think this would let you get 2 monitors on it.

https://www.newegg.com/sapphire-radeon-rx-550-100414p4gl/p/N82E16814202287
 
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In my experience running multi monitor and using the setup for gaming, I found that the best and most reliable solution is to run two gpus. The primary display is connected to the gaming gpu and all other monitors are connected to secondary gpu. I always use SLEEP and never have issues. In fact when waking from sleep, only the primary monitor wakes up until I log in, and then the other displays become active.
 
My first attempt would be to remove the daisy chained monitor and connect direct to pc. Enable your on board graphics if necessary.

Even with monitors from the same manufacturer, I have seen this not work well (hp in my case).

If you have the resources to play around, try an install of win7. It seems w7 was the last version where microsoft actually gave a crap about pc's.
 
Is there a bios update for your Dell? Not sure if the Dell update picks up on bios updates or not. Sometimes it addresses issues like sleep with an update.
 
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System specs:
Dell XPS 8900
Core i7-6700 @ 4GHz
32gb DDR4 RAM
Intel HD Graphics 530 (integrated)
AMD Radeon RX 480 8gb
256gb SSD
2TB HDD

I have no monitors connected to the integrated graphics ports. I have the following 5 monitors (all at native resolutions) connected to the RX 480:
DP port 1: 1920x1200; daisy-chained 1080x1920 (portrait orientation)
DP port 2: 1920x1200
DP port 3: 1920x1080
HDMI port: 2160x3840 (portrait orientation)

This monitor configuration is somewhat unstable. When the computer wakes from sleep, sometimes all the monitors wake up, sometimes 1 will not wake (not always the same monitor) - I can usually wake the sleeping monitor by going into Windows 10 Display Settings, where Windows thinks the monitor is connected and awake, disable the monitor and then re-enable it. Even when the computer is running, very occasionally a monitor will drop out and go to sleep.
Wanted to follow up on this. I swapped out the Radeon card for two Nvidia NVS 510 cards. Been a few weeks and this change seems to have resolved two issues:
1. monitors not all waking up from sleep. Since the swap, all monitors reliably wake up from sleep
2. occasionally a monitor drops out while PC is running. Since the swap, this has not happened.

One issue that remained was a couple of monitors occasionally have very brief instances of distortions/flashing on parts of the screen. I swapped out those DP cables for Accel DP cables and that issue seems to be resolved.

And as a bonus, I added a 6th monitor (2k monitor). So now I've got:
2 x 1920x1080
2 x 1920x1200
1 x 2560x1440
1 x 3840x2160

Only display issue I have is some windows will be rearranged upon waking from sleep, but from my experience and what I've read, this issue has always plagued Windows multi-monitor setups using DisplayPort. It's annoying, but not a big deal. And I do run DisplayFusion, which may exacerbate things, but I recall I had this issue even before I started using DisplayFusion.

As for suggestions to use HDMI or DVI, this isn't an option once you ramp up the number of monitors. On many cards, you are limited to a max of 2 HDMI and or DVI connections. So for 5 or 6 monitor setups, you have to use DP.
 
Only display issue I have is some windows will be rearranged upon waking from sleep, but from my experience and what I've read, this issue has always plagued Windows multi-monitor setups using DisplayPort. It's annoying, but not a big deal.
I dont think that issue is limited to displayport connections.

But thank you for following up. It's always good to hear what worked (and didn't!)

Over the years, the one issue I have seen with displayport connectors, is that the average person doesn't know about them and assumes it is an HDMI connector.
Seen damaged displayport cables/ports because people don't realize that (some) DP cables have a lock on them, and use brute force to disconnect. Seems that a lot of the cheapie OEM cables have dropped the locking mechanism.
 
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