David Goodwin

More monitors.

I have an Intel NUC d54250wyk as my work computer (it’s a little dinky thing, which somehow manages to pack a reasonable punch).

On board it has a mini-hdmi port, and a mini-display port – which I used for a dual monitor configuration.

But two monitors is so last year …. and after 5+ years of having two monitors to stare at, I thought it was perhaps time to move up to 3 (or more).

The good news — it supports display port MST (MST = Multi Stream Transport) and a triple monitor configuration.

So I took the plunge after Christmas and bought a StarTech Triple Head MST hub thing (as I don’t have any monitors which support display port daisy chaining etc) and a load of DisplayPort to HDMI adapters for my monitors.

Possibly relevant bits :

  1. Update the NUCs BIOS to the latest version (my bios was about 4 revisions out of date)
  2. Add “deb http://cdn.debian.net/debian experimental main non-free” to /etc/apt/sources.list if it’s not already there.
  3. Install the Linux 3.6.18(or greater) kernel (includes MST patches) (apt-get install -t experimental linux-image-3.18.0-trunk-amd64 if you’re running Debian Jessie)
  4. Use something like ‘arandr’ to get the order of the monitors right

Then after rebooting, it’s just a case of running ‘arandr’ or similar to fix the positions of the monitors.

Unfortunately I can’t seem to get it to run 3 monitors off the display port AND one off the HDMI output at the same time.

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Comments

8 responses to “More monitors.”

  1. Robert Sigler Avatar
    Robert Sigler

    Hi, thanks for posting! I have the same NUC (D54250WYK) with the latest BIOS FW. I installed the 3.18 kernel and rebooted; with one monitor connected to my MST hub, works fine. Two or more, no signal to any of the monitors. Did you, by any change, make any changes to any BIOS settings?

  2. David Goodwin Avatar
    David Goodwin

    Nope .. sorry. I don’t think I saw any settings in the BIOS to change to be honest.
    If there’s a specific setting / screen shot you’d like from me, ask and I can try and help…

  3. Kyle Avatar
    Kyle

    Im not sure if you ever found out or not, but the Intel Chip in the NUC uses an HD5000 which only supports 3 screens, see the Ark for more details

  4. David Goodwin Avatar
    David Goodwin

    Indeed – you’re quite right. I’d hoped that maybe it would somehow do 3 dp + 1 hdmi, but no. Still, I shouldn’t complain 🙂

  5. Kevin Avatar
    Kevin

    Hey,

    I have the same NUC and the Startech MST Hub but can’t seem to get video out. Did you make any special bios changes?

  6. David Goodwin Avatar
    David Goodwin

    I did apply a BIOS update – and I think it didn’t work before that.

    I don’t think there were/are any BIOS config options – just plugging in the hub and then the monitors just worked.

  7. Kevin Avatar
    Kevin

    Hmm… I did the BIOS update but am getting nothing on the screens. I’m wondering if it has something with the legacy and UEFI options on the NUC. I saw a post about not having DP working when Legacy was disabled. I’m running Windows so maybe there is a difference for startup options compared to Linux.

    Hopefully I can figure this out! Thanks.

  8. David Goodwin Avatar
    David Goodwin

    Ah. Sorry; I’ve not tried Windows on an NUC; I don’t know if there’s some extra magic/drivers needed or not….

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