4k monitor - what do I need?

Snooze

Hello folks,

I have purchased an Iiyama X4071UHSU 40" 4k monitor which has connections for 2xHDMI, 1xHDMI/MHL, DisplayPort and is HDCP 1.4 according to the specs. What PC hardware and cabling do I need to run it? I won't be doing any 4k gaming on it, just perhaps a bit of Minecraft occasionally, but I will be wanting to utilise the full 4k screen goodness to have different programs open and displayed at the same time.

The PC I plan to connect to it is some years old now and has integrated graphics and a single HDMI socket. There is no DisplayPort. I've read conflicting info saying I'll need a high end PC with dedicated graphics supporting HDMI 2.0 to run it. Any truth to this or will it run with my current equipment?

Thanks.:)

neilmcl

Wow, you've bought a £600 40" just to play a bit of Minecraft on, talk about overkill, and no offence intended but a bit of a waste of money.

If you want to take full advantage then it does look you'll need to update your PC as your integrated graphics wont support 4K.

Snooze

neilmcl wrote: »

Wow, you've bought a £600 40" just to play a bit of Minecraft on, talk about overkill, and no offence intended but a bit of a waste of money.

If you want to take full advantage then it does look you'll need to update your PC as your integrated graphics wont support 4K.

Not sure how you've come to the conclusion that I've only bought it to "play a bit of Minecraft on" but whatever.

I welcome constructive replies.

stator

You need a graphics card that outputs Display Port or HDMI 2.0 or both.

The first step is to check what sort of graphics card your PC accepts. Hopefully it has a spare PCI-E slot, as that will make the upgrade process easy.

Please download a program called CPUID CPU-Z and run it. Go to the Mainboard tab and take a screenshot and then post it here. Then we can see what motherboard you have.

Assuming you have a free PCI-E slot you can then upgrade with a card such as this:
https://www.novatech.co.uk/products/msi-amd-radeon-rx-550-2gb-aero-itx-oc-graphics-card/rx550aeroitx2goc.html
Which will run Minecraft more than OK and support the outputs you require. You can probably get ones cheaper too.

I wouldn't buy any Radeon lower than 460 or 560 because you want the latest version of the Radeon which includes hardware decoding options that will make it faster decoding 4K content. You might want to consider upgrading to a Radeon 570 if you can find one at good value for money as the 3d performance would be a lot better.

If you want an NVIDIA Geforce card you'd want one that's a GeForce 10 series, GeForce GT 1030, GeForce GTX 1050, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti etc because the 10 series has a full hardware 4k decoder.

I've got a 4k/UHD monitor and hardware decode is something you definitely want. I've tried playing videos on youtube and when the hardware decoding doesn't work it eats up a lot of CPU and the cooling fans have to go into overdrive.

agrinnall

Snooze wrote: »

Not sure how you've come to the conclusion that I've only bought it to "play a bit of Minecraft on" but whatever.

Perhaps it's because you wrote...

Snooze wrote: »

I won't be doing any 4k gaming on it, just perhaps a bit of Minecraft occasionally

System

Snooze wrote: »

Hello folks,

I have purchased an Iiyama X4071UHSU 40" 4k monitor which has connections for 2xHDMI, 1xHDMI/MHL, DisplayPort and is HDCP 1.4 according to the specs. What PC hardware and cabling do I need to run it? I won't be doing any 4k gaming on it, just perhaps a bit of Minecraft occasionally, but I will be wanting to utilise the full 4k screen goodness to have different programs open and displayed at the same time.

I can guarantee that it won't take you long before you realise how much of a mistake this was and wish you'd decided to buy two or three monitors instead and run a multimonitor set up. This will happen the very first time you want to be able to read your mail/browse web at the same time as using something else and that something else runs in full screen and won't let you run it in a window.

stator

I've no regrets. I've not found any programs that don't either cope with the 4k resolution easily themselves or have a simple option to make all the text bigger. It's not a problem.
You can use a 4k monitor and a second monitor also. In fact I'm sitting at a desk with 4 monitors on it.
You can get LCD monitors on gumtree for £5 / £10

neilmcl

stator wrote: »

I've no regrets. I've not found any programs that don't either cope with the 4k resolution easily themselves or have a simple option to make all the text bigger. It's not a problem.
You can use a 4k monitor and a second monitor also. In fact I'm sitting at a desk with 4 monitors on it.
You can get LCD monitors on gumtree for £5 / £10

I think it was more of question of why spend nearly £600 on a 40" 4K monitor when you could get two or more decent, smaller monitors for far less if you want to be able to have multiple windows open at anyone time.

Snooze

agrinnall wrote: »

Perhaps it's because you wrote...

Another one that can't read. Where does it say anywhere in my post that I am ONLY buying it to play Minecraft on? That's right : nowhere.

stator

neilmcl wrote: »

I think it was more of question of why spend nearly £600 on a 40" 4K monitor when you could get two or more decent, smaller monitors for far less if you want to be able to have multiple windows open at anyone time.

The only reason to buy a 4k monitor is if you want the image quality. I believe the OP is into graphics or CAD or something

neilmcl

Snooze wrote: »

Another one that can't read. Where does it say anywhere in my post that I am ONLY buying it to play Minecraft on? That's right : nowhere.

Maybe instead of telling us what you don't want the monitor for it might have been useful saying what you do predominantly want to use a 40" 4K display for.