Modest desktop machine recommendations

gadb · 08-05-2021, 07:56 AM

Been struggling to get a new (old, second hand) machine that can run Linux and drive 3 independent display monitors. Tried a couple of Lenovo ThinkStations (m73 and m92p) with no success.

I just need a cheap, quiet, ideally (but not neccessarily) small desktop machine that can drive 3 independent displays. I don't do CPU/Memory/IO intensive tasks on this machine and I don't want to play games on it. I thought this would be easy, I thought my demands were modest, but it's already eaten a fair amount of time and I've got precisely nowhere useful. My Surface Pro 3 drives the monitors just fine, but it only has 4Gb of ram (I'd ideally have 8 or 16) and I want to be able to wander off and use the surface as a tablet for reading without disrupting whatever is happening on my desktop machine.

Any help much appreciated.
Thanks,
Graham.

business_kid · 08-05-2021, 09:35 AM

Drive three monitors? Why three?

You're saying you don't want to do anything special, but you need 8-16G of ram. What for? What is the extra ram for?

There's often not a problem machine, as much as problem owners. You need to run problems down. If you want to stop wasting your time read How_To_Ask_a_Question

fatmac · 08-05-2021, 10:08 AM

A Raspberry Pi 4B will drive two monitors via HDMI, & has an onboard connection for a screen, (just not sure it will do all 3 at once).

Why 3 screens? (Especially as you say you're not doing anything special - to me, using 2 screens is somewhat special!)

gadb · 08-05-2021, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid

Drive three monitors? Why three?

You're saying you don't want to do anything special, but you need 8-16G of ram. What for? What is the extra ram for?

There's often not a problem machine, as much as problem owners. You need to run problems down. If you want to stop wasting your time read How_To_Ask_a_Question

Are you 5 years old? Literally, a spoilt child? I did just waste my time. Replying to a 5 year old. Silly me.

gadb · 08-05-2021, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatmac

A Raspberry Pi 4B will drive two monitors via HDMI, & has an onboard connection for a screen, (just not sure it will do all 3 at once).

Why 3 screens? (Especially as you say you're not doing anything special - to me, using 2 screens is somewhat special!)

Hey,

I need 3 screens because I do dev work and use 1 for code 1 for debug and 1 for the app. Maybe doing dev work is special in some sense, although I've been running with this configuration for over 10 years.

The Raspi 4 would do me although I do run some non-arm binaries (headset for instance) and there's the 3rd monitor issue as you say. But I have one with 2 monitors and they're nice.

I have 4Gb on my surface and it falls over when I'm working and also have too many browser tabs open, so I need to fix that. If only I could expand the RAM in my surface I might be able to live with it. Ah well.

Annoying thing is, I think the old think centre I just bought can do 3 monitors but I've only seen people mention that when talking about Windows 8 or 10 or whatever. Not Linux.

Cheers,
G.

boughtonp · 08-05-2021, 01:12 PM

Two monitors is perfectly normal for dev work. In my experience, three monitors on a single machine is a luxury. (Which doesn't mean it can't work.)

Whilst sentence 6 of post #2 is idiotic, the remainder is not unreasonable.

Specifically, start with the bare minimum needed for anyone to help...
1) Which Linux-based OS you're using? (e.g. run "cat /etc/*release*" )
2) Precisely what hardware you're using? (inxi is a useful tool for this)
3) What you've tried and at what point does it not work?

Searching for the obvious "linux three monitors" seems to offer plenty of tutorials - if you've followed any of those, say exactly which one and what step you reached before your results differed from expectations.

jmgibson1981 · 08-05-2021, 01:58 PM

I don't know those Thinkstations by any means. If you have a dedicated gpu and 2 of the screens on it they will work but the one on the motherboard doesn't it may be a problem with a setting in the bios. On my machine when a discrete card is added it effectively disables the onboard video outputs. They can be re-enabled in the bios if you know what to look for. Other than that though in my experience it's plug and play. No screwing around, should just work.

Need more symptoms to try to help. "Doesn't work" doesn't give much to look for.

gadb · 08-05-2021, 02:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boughtonp

Two monitors is perfectly normal for dev work. In my experience, three monitors on a single machine is a luxury. (Which doesn't mean it can't work.)

Whilst sentence 6 of post #2 is idiotic, the remainder is not unreasonable.

Specifically, start with the bare minimum needed for anyone to help...
1) Which Linux-based OS you're using? (e.g. run "cat /etc/*release*" )
2) Precisely what hardware you're using? (inxi is a useful tool for this)
3) What you've tried and at what point does it not work?

Searching for the obvious "linux three monitors" seems to offer plenty of tutorials - if you've followed any of those, say exactly which one and what step you reached before your results differed from expectations.

Hey,

Thanks for replying. I didn't really expect anyone to fix my issue - I've been running linux os since '93 (yeah, so I'm an old fart) and I know the deal when drivers don't just work out of the box. Except for the past 10 years at least, they do. Which is why I found this issue a bit odd. What I was really asking for was, if you have a 3 monitor setup on your desktop, what hardware are you using? But I appreciate your methodical approach and taking the time (and please don't feel patronised by that remark, it's not meant that way).

Get that 3rd monitor mate. Worth every penny. In fact, keep adding monitors until you can't see what's on them without having to get out of your seat. I'd have more if my eyesight wasn't so crap.

As it turns out, it was a DP issue and I'll post something in a non-reply with the details. Personally, I hate DP. It's just flaky temperamental headache from start to finish. I've had more trouble with DP specifically, than any other connection standard or graphics card driver in my entire IT literate life. Maybe I should have looked there first.

I swapped a vanilla DP cable, for one with an active DVI -> DP converter (so that I ended up with 2 x DVI-DP connector cables and 1 x VGA) and it just started working. Until that point, I was just getting mirrored monitors and non-detection of my third monitor. How do you start to debug that sort of issue? Trial and error and process of elimination. It's typical DP hell.

Cheers,
G.

gadb · 08-05-2021, 02:27 PM

My setup is Linux Mint 20.2 and a ThinkStation m92p with the Intel (rather than NVidia) graphics on board.

lspci shows:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:16.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family KT Controller (rev 04)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection (Lewisville) (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev a4)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Q77 Express Chipset LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04)

Should work out of the box and it would have, if it weren't for crappy display port cable issues.
If in doubt, always suspect that your issue is with the crappy, should-never-have-escaped-from-the-lab, worst ever display connection tech - display port.

Make sure all your cables are the same length. Make sure you have the same active / inactive converters on them if needed. Make sure you make the right incantations and sacrifices at the right orientation to the sun on the summer solstice. And all will be well.

gadb · 08-05-2021, 02:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmgibson1981

I don't know those Thinkstations by any means. If you have a dedicated gpu and 2 of the screens on it they will work but the one on the motherboard doesn't it may be a problem with a setting in the bios. On my machine when a discrete card is added it effectively disables the onboard video outputs. They can be re-enabled in the bios if you know what to look for. Other than that though in my experience it's plug and play. No screwing around, should just work.

Need more symptoms to try to help. "Doesn't work" doesn't give much to look for.

Have got lucky buggering about with different DP cables, but thanks for your response - appreciated.

boughtonp · 08-05-2021, 05:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gadb

Get that 3rd monitor mate. Worth every penny. In fact, keep adding monitors until you can't see what's on them without having to get out of your seat. I'd have more if my eyesight wasn't so crap.

Heh, already got the monitor, just no physical space to set things up.

Quote:

I swapped a vanilla DP cable, for one with an active DVI -> DP converter (so that I ended up with 2 x DVI-DP connector cables and 1 x VGA) and it just started working. Until that point, I was just getting mirrored monitors and non-detection of my third monitor. How do you start to debug that sort of issue? Trial and error and process of elimination. It's typical DP hell.

I've had limited exposure to DisplayPort, but any time cables are involved, I'd systematically confirm each one worked. (And still worked after wiggling each part of it.)

And if DVI is involved, check whether it's DVI-A vs DVI-D or DVD-I. If it's supposed to be the latter, maybe a broken pin/wire made it appear as analog and that's why the active converter worked?

zeebra · 08-16-2021, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gadb

My setup is Linux Mint 20.2 and a ThinkStation m92p with the Intel (rather than NVidia) graphics on board.

That reminds me, I have a machine with inbuilt intel graphics and a nvidia graphic card. This graphic card has 2 hdmi outputs.

I'm thinking it should be possible for me to output to 3 screens with this setup, provided I can set it up properly in the software (X mainly). My guess is that I would need to use nouveau rather than the proprietary driver. I even remember reading about (years ago) getting 2 graphic cards (not 2 external) working on the same machine.

Perhaps I'm wrong? I never tried such a setup, but I can't imagine it should not be too difficult.

So (if I'm not wrong), that's the kind of machine you are looking for.

obobskivich · 08-18-2021, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zeebra

That reminds me, I have a machine with inbuilt intel graphics and a nvidia graphic card. This graphic card has 2 hdmi outputs.

I'm thinking it should be possible for me to output to 3 screens with this setup, provided I can set it up properly in the software (X mainly). My guess is that I would need to use nouveau rather than the proprietary driver. I even remember reading about (years ago) getting 2 graphic cards (not 2 external) working on the same machine.

Perhaps I'm wrong? I never tried such a setup, but I can't imagine it should not be too difficult.

So (if I'm not wrong), that's the kind of machine you are looking for.

I know this is a mostly 'solved' thread but I have a reply to this post, apologies for any 'necro':

- The 'nvidia' driver (the proprietary one) is very picky about multiple GPUs driving the same Xscreen - I believe it works if every GPU is the exact same model, but otherwise it will insist on creating each GPU as a separate Xscreen (which is a pain).

- All other drivers (i915, radeon, amdgpu, noveau) will 'just work' in my experience with multiple GPUs + physical displays under Xscreen0 (or whatever). You will probably want ARandR to make setup simpler in a GUI, but it can be done (usually) in the default GNOME/Xfce/etc display configurations, or via command line with xrandr commands.

- I've never had issues with 3 (or 4, or 8) monitors in GNOME or XFCE - I don't have any reason to believe KDE wouldn't work as well (I know I've tried multi-monitor in KDE and found it to work, but I couldn't remember specifics).

- You will want to familiarize yourself with PRIME when running multiple GPUs if you need 3D acceleration for something - the system will default to the 'first' GPU (whatever is set to 'init first' in BIOS becomes '0') for 3D acceleration, which may not be the 'best' GPU (for example if you have an Intel iGPU and a great big Radeon card, the iGPU may init first and is thus '0' but the Radeon is probably faster), so you'll either need to change that setting in BIOS, re-arrange physical add-in cards, or direct the system (via PRIME) to use the GPU of choice (either as a global or per-application). https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PRIME (it does apply to more than just 'laptops' or 'nvidia optimus' systems to be clear)

In my experience this is 'dead easy' unless you want to bring the nvidia proprietary driver to the party, in which case it is often an exercise in frustration. I've had no issues playing around with noveau though (mostly with older GeForce and Quadro cards), alongside various Radeons (both add-in and iGPU), FirePros (the Radeon equivalent of Quadro), and Intel iGPU graphics.

Other things I've tried and thus far never had good luck with:
- 3DLabs cards. They don't work properly (as far as I know there is no even remotely up-to-date driver available).
- Matrox cards. I have an odd selection of Matrox cards so that may be part of the issue - supposedly some are supported but I guess mine are not.
- Mix-and-match very old and very new Radeon cards can lead to unexpected/erratic things and can be unstable (old + old is still OKAY in newer distros, so I think it's just an odd corner case that nobody has tested - I mean really who is putting first-generation PCIe Radeon X800 alongside their VEGA?)

mrmazda · 08-22-2021, 12:43 AM

3 displays on ordinary hardware need not be difficult. This is from nearly 5 year old technology:

Code:

# xrandr --listproviders
Providers: number : 1
Provider 0: id: 0x47; cap: 0xf (Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload); crtcs: 3; outputs: 5; associated providers: 0; name: modesetting
    output DP-1         # correct
    output HDMI-1       # non-existent
    output HDMI-2       # sole HDMI
    output HDMI-3       # DVI-D
    output DP-2         # VGA
# inxi -CIMSyz
System:
  Host: ab250 Kernel: 5.13.8-1-default x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: Trinity R14.0.10 Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20210810
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: PRIME B250M-C v: Rev X.0x 
  serial: <filter> UEFI: American Megatrends v: 1608 date: 10/21/2019 
CPU:
  Info: Dual Core model: Intel Pentium G4600 bits: 64 type: MT MCP cache:
  L2: 3 MiB
  Speed: 800 MHz min/max: 800/3600 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 800 2: 800 3: 800
  4: 800
Info:...Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.06
# inxi -Gay
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 630 vendor: ASUSTeK driver: i915 v: kernel
  bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:5912 class-ID: 0300
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: loaded: modesetting
  unloaded: fbdev,vesa alternate: intel display-ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 2560x3720 s-dpi: 120 s-size: 541x787mm (21.3x31.0")
  s-diag: 955mm (37.6")
  Monitor-1: DP-1 res: 2560x1440 hz: 60 dpi: 109 size: 598x336mm (23.5x13.2")
  diag: 686mm (27")
  Monitor-2: HDMI-2 res: 2560x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 97 size: 673x284mm (26.5x11.2")
  diag: 730mm (28.8")
  Monitor-3: HDMI-3 res: 1920x1200 hz: 60 dpi: 94 size: 519x324mm (20.4x12.8") # DVI-D
  diag: 612mm (24.1")
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 630 (KBL GT2)
  v: 4.6 Mesa 21.1.6 compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes

I have a Gigabyte mobo with same family CPU that works similarly, the only differences being HDMI-1 is HDMI, and HDMI-2 is DVI-D. My 7 year old Intel boards even with 4 outputs refuse to light more than two displays on digital ouputs at once - it's only HDMI or DVI, not both, in addition to DP and VGA to get 3:

Code:

# xrandr --listproviders
Providers: number : 1
Provider 0: id: 0x47; cap: 0xf (Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload); crtcs: 3; outputs: 5; associated providers: 0; name: modesetting
    output VGA-1        # correct
    output DP-1         # correct
    output HDMI-1       # non-existent
    output HDMI-2       # DVI-D
    output HDMI-3       # sole HDMI
# inxi -CIMSyz
System:
  Host: ab85m Kernel: 5.12.13-1-default x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: Trinity R14.0.10 Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20210810
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: ASUS product: All Series v: N/A serial: N/A 
  Mobo: ASUSTeK model: B85M-E v: Rev X.0x serial: <filter>
  UEFI: American Megatrends v: 3602 date: 04/04/2018 
CPU:
  Info: Dual Core model: Intel Pentium G3220 bits: 64 type: MCP cache:
  L2: 3 MiB
  Speed: 1896 MHz min/max: 800/3000 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1896 2: 1896
Info:...Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.06
# inxi -Gay
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics
  vendor: ASUSTeK driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:0402
  class-ID: 0300
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: loaded: modesetting
  unloaded: fbdev,vesa alternate: intel display-ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 7040x1440 s-dpi: 120 s-size: 1490x304mm (58.7x12.0")
  s-diag: 1521mm (59.9")
  Monitor-1: VGA-1 res: 1920x1200 hz: 60 dpi: 94 size: 519x324mm (20.4x12.8")
  diag: 612mm (24.1")
  Monitor-2: DP-1 res: 2560x1440 hz: 60 dpi: 109 size: 598x336mm (23.5x13.2")
  diag: 686mm (27")
  Monitor-3: HDMI-3 res: 2560x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 97 size: 673x284mm (26.5x11.2")
  diag: 730mm (28.8")
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics (HSW GT1) v: 4.5 Mesa 21.1.6
  compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes

My 6 year old AMD boards with 4 outputs also refuse to light up more than two digital outputs at once:

Code:

# xrandr --listproviders
Providers: number : 1
Provider 0: id: 0x57; cap: 0xf (Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload); crtcs: 4; outputs: 4; associated providers: 0; name: Unknown AMD Radeon GPU @ pci:0000:00:01.0
    output DVI-D-0
    output VGA-0
    output DisplayPort-0
    output HDMI-A-0
# inxi -CIMSyz
System:
  Host: ara88 Kernel: 5.12.13-1-default x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: Trinity R14.0.10 Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20210810
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: ASRock model: FM2A88X Extreme6+ serial: <filter>
  UEFI: American Megatrends v: P4.20 date: 01/13/2016
CPU:
  Info: Quad Core model: AMD PRO A8-8650B R7 10 Compute Cores 4C+6G bits: 64
  type: MCP cache: L2: 2 MiB
  Speed: 1396 MHz min/max: 1400/3200 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1396 2: 1396
  3: 1397 4: 1395
Info:...Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.06
# inxi -Gay
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Kaveri [Radeon R7 Graphics] vendor: ASRock driver: amdgpu
  v: kernel alternate: radeon bus-ID: 00:01.0 chip-ID: 1002:1313
  class-ID: 0300
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: loaded: amdgpu
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa alternate: ati display-ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 2560x3570 s-dpi: 120 s-size: 541x755mm (21.3x29.7")
  s-diag: 929mm (36.6")
  Monitor-1: VGA-0 res: 1680x1050 hz: 60 dpi: 90 size: 474x296mm (18.7x11.7")
  diag: 559mm (22")
  Monitor-2: DisplayPort-0 res: 2560x1440 hz: 60 dpi: 109
  size: 598x336mm (23.5x13.2") diag: 686mm (27")
  Monitor-3: HDMI-A-0 res: 2560x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 97
  size: 673x284mm (26.5x11.2") diag: 730mm (28.8")
  OpenGL: renderer: AMD KAVERI (DRM 3.40.0 5.12.13-1-default LLVM 12.0.1)
  v: 4.6 Mesa 21.1.6 direct render: Yes

IME, DisplayPorts are less troublesome than HDMI ports, and less fussy about cables.

obobskivich · 08-22-2021, 04:40 PM

Many videocards (which includes 'onboard' solutions) only include timing circuitry for two TMDS digital outputs at once - and assume you're going to use 'active' adapters (that include their own clocks) or DP connections for the remainder. This has been a trend ever since AMD put more than two outputs on Radeon cards back in 2009 (with the HD 5870). Most Intel and AMD IGPs back to at least Haswell/Trinity should support 3 displays however it will depend on the motherboard as to whether the connections are available; 4 independent displays is unsupported on any IGP I've ever looked into (but is now pretty common on most mid-range (or better) dGPUs).