Zisworks X39 kit review.

geok1ng

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After a long time, i finally solved my procrastination issues and put my X39 kit to work.

To those unfamiliar with it, zisworks kits are boards that replace your tv/monitor internals for state of art electronics.

The supported panels are few, mostly 28" 4k TNs and 39" 4k VA's.

I had an old Seiki 39", purchased back in 2013. As a 4k display, it only worked for watching movies, but gaming at 1080p 120hz was very good at its price range.

The Zisworks kit turns this old TV into a beast:

-No more PWM backlight; Select PWM-Free, scan and strobe modes.
-4k/120Hz, 1080p/240Hz, 720p/300hz and 540p/480Hz, with legacy 60 and 30Hz support.
-zero input lag.

Assembly took about 30 minutes, debugging took much longer. Had to purchase some arduino adapters to flash the boards, get new DP cables and a few hours trying to work out what was wrong. In the end, the tested OK mark on the boards proved correct and i was ready to use it.

Scan mode is amazing. PERIOD.
4k120hz with scan feels smoother than 1080p 240hz without it.
As Blurbusters stated, 480Hz is noticeably better than 240Hz, but the true jewel on the product is scan mode.

Do games recognize the tiled display at 4k120hz?
Yes, but before that you have to make NVIDIA control panel activate it, which will took some patience and a cold reboot.
After that, is just one of the best 4k motion experiences one can get today without OLED.

The kit was not cheap, but if you have one of the supported panels around, its is a must buy.
I would recommend the complete 28" monitor for professional e-sports,not general usage, because TN is not my cup of tea and 28" is too small for 4k.

Zisworks promised a new version, with support for more panels, including quantum dots models. definitively recommended.

ratings:

performance 5/5
value 5/5 for kits, 4/5 for complete monitors.

Conclusion: we have been waiting for the technical Nirvana of a PC monitor: low input lag, low motion blur, high resolution and high refresh rate. Zisworks kits deliver it for both VA and TN panels.
 
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I've been using a 39" seiki for several years and just discovered this kit is a thing. Other than the price, the only thing holding me back is the lack of freesync support. My video card is decent, but not spectacular (RX480). It's not going to hold a steady 60Hz on modern games at 4k, and 120Hz is certainly unobtainable. Adaptive sync would make up for unsteady framerates, but this kit doesn't tick that box. It's odd that it doesn't, since they've obviously put so much effort into creating these boards and given them more than enough processing power to handle adaptive sync.

This kit would have to be the "holy grail" to be worth the $500 they're asking for it. Without freesync, it's not quite grail material.
 
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I've been using a 39" seiki for several years and just discovered this kit is a thing. Other than the price, the only thing holding me back is the lack of freesync support. My video card is decent, but not spectacular (RX480). It's not going to hold a steady 60Hz on modern games at 4k, and 120Hz is certainly unobtainable. Adaptive sync would make up for unsteady framerates, but this kit doesn't tick that box. It's odd that it doesn't, since they've obviously put so much effort into creating these boards and given them more than enough processing power to handle adaptive sync.

This kit would have to be the "holy grail" to be worth the $500 they're asking for it. Without freesync, it's not quite grail material.
Do you want to pay 1.5k for a kit?
Then yes you can have freesync 4k/120 at reduced bitrate. It's too expensive and requires fpga or a million dollar minimum order from realtek.
Hence this isn't a thing.. It was tried akready..
 
I will side with candre23 on this: if one is sitting on a RX480 and considers $500 holy grail price range, *sync is a must, because the card can not handle 4k 60hz or even 1080p 120hz on quite a few games.
Then again, selling the TV will at best put the budget around the low end Freesync 34x14 VAs. And one loses: motion clarity, resolution, refresh rate and input lag. ironically, the RX480 is almost a decent card at 34x14.

Which brings me to the point: [H]oly grail price range in monitors is nort[H] of $900.
Please lets not compare Zisworks kits value against high end variable refresh displays twice the price.

Zis kits do not have Freesync because even after signing AMD's NDA, the only source of DP chips compatible with Freesync refused to sell parts to Zis. Meanwhile, if someone with a lower end gpu decides to game at 4k instead of 1080p, there is always vsync.
 
Zis kits do not have Freesync because even after signing AMD's NDA, the only source of DP chips compatible with Freesync refused to sell parts to Zis. Meanwhile, if someone with a lower end gpu decides to game at 4k instead of 1080p, there is always vsync.

Interesting. Too low order amounts?

I'm all for things like this because big manufacturers seem to be unable to make a display that has no drawbacks. Either the software is buggy and rubbish or doesn't support things just because.
 
Too low order amounts?

No. the only hardware supplier simply refused to sell Displayport chips capable of Freesync. "Sorry, we can only sell these chips to company Y"

So Freesync is not so open standard like advertised after all.

big manufacturers seem to be unable to make a display that has no drawbacks

Point is cost, investment and time to market. Big manufactures have sinking costs that a one man operation does not.

And all this effort can be negated the moment LG decides to sell OLED panels with *sync.

We are being milked by display manufacturers .

Zys is just extending the use of old hardware while OLED + *sync does not arrives.
 
These are neat, but you can get the whole thing prebuilt with the 120hz 43" UH430 for around $1200 direct from SK, no duty in US for now. I think there is also a 49" option showing up now.

Different panel (IPS vs VA) but no split panel weirdness or self-assembly required, two DP 1.4 and some hdmi 2.0 if you want to plug in consoles or whatever. No FS, but does have "HDR" (not) actual 10bit (yes) up to 96hz input.
 
Yeah, Adaptive refresh is the thing holding me back. I have an old Crossover 404K and would love to upgrade it.

Is it ANY adaptive refresh chips that Zis can't get a hold of or ONLY the FreeSync™ ones?
 
These are neat, but you can get the whole thing prebuilt with the 120hz 43" UH430 for around $1200 direct from SK, no duty in US for now. I think there is also a 49" option showing up now.

Different panel (IPS vs VA) but no split panel weirdness or self-assembly required, two DP 1.4 and some hdmi 2.0 if you want to plug in consoles or whatever. No FS, but does have "HDR" (not) actual 10bit (yes) up to 96hz input.

there is no split panel weirdness, windows does not sees the display as tiled.

The wasabi UH430 is much larger at 43", costs more than any pre-built complete Zysworks monitor, is uglier, does not have strobe or scan modes, is only 120hz, did i mention that Zisworks kits do 10b 4k 120hz ?
upload_2018-10-17_20-20-54.png
 
Do you want to pay 1.5k for a kit?
Then yes you can have freesync 4k/120 at reduced bitrate. It's too expensive and requires fpga or a million dollar minimum order from realtek.
Hence this isn't a thing.. It was tried akready..

I don't need 4k/120 with freesync, I'd be perfectly happy with 4k/60 with freesync. Wasabi sold ~40" 4k/60 monitors with freesync for <$600 several years ago, so the necessary chips can't be completely unobtainable for low volume manufacturers.

It seems hard to believe that four years after the DP1.2a spec was finalized including adaptive sync, there is only one company making DP1.2a compatible chips, and they will only sell them to specific manufacturers.
 
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I don't need 4k/120 with freesync, I'd be perfectly happy with 4k/60 with freesync. Wasabi sold ~40" 4k/60 monitors with freesync for <$600 several years ago, so the necessary chips can't be completely unobtainable for low volume manufacturers.

It seems hard to believe that four years after the DP1.2a spec was finalized including adaptive sync, there is only one company making DP1.2a compatible chips, and they will only sell them to specific manufacturers.

He never said it was just ONE company, its just that it was THE company that made the chips compatible with whatever data AMD offered under NDA to him. considering zys products are the only ones requiring 300hz and 480hz refresh rates, it is nor hard to believe that 2 years ago such chips were hard to come by...

The guy made:
the first 4k scan display,
the first 240Hz 1080pmonitor,
the first 480Hz monitors
and sent the first review samples of 4k 120hz displays ever.

I would take its expertise over any korean manufacturer with wasabi on the name.
 
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