Accessory Small 4K Monitor

[henrygrins]

Update to the update to the update: Received my Misumi stuff the other day and built this out:

Obviously I still have a ton of work to do, not to mention getting Mac OS up and running, buying an eGPU of some sort, etc etc etc, but it's a start. You likely can't tell from the pics, but the monitor looks absolutely fantastic. 100% Adobe RGB, or so they claim, at UHD in a 17.3" form factor. It really doesn't get any better than this.

 

[Ceros_X]

Could you hack something like this for power? Monitor and board sold take that much anperage, might be able to run it off an intrenal header:


Edit: Actually, doing research it looks like a lot of these converter boards need 12V @ 3.3A so the above cable wouldn't work (most only put out 550ma or so).

 

[henrygrins]

Could you hack something like this for power? Monitor and board sold take that much anperage, might be able to run it off an intrenal header:


Edit: Actually, doing research it looks like a lot of these converter boards need 12V @ 3.3A so the above cable wouldn't work (most only put out 550ma or so).

Yeah, mine calls for 12V @ 2A, although I'm not sure it actually pulls that much current. I bought a variable buck boost board with a handy dandy inbuilt LCD voltage readout and even handier dandier screw terminals. I'm going to house that in a small aluminum project box, isolated by nylon standoffs. Then I'll connect the inputs and outputs to 5.5mm barrel connectors, plus a pass-through connection which just feeds the full 19V straight through to another barrel connector. Male-to-male 5.5mm connectors will link both the NUC and the Screen from this box.

 

[Soul_Est]

Update to the update to the update: Received my Misumi stuff the other day and built this out:
--snip--

Obviously I still have a ton of work to do, not to mention getting Mac OS up and running, buying an eGPU of some sort, etc etc etc, but it's a start. You likely can't tell from the pics, but the monitor looks absolutely fantastic. 100% Adobe RGB, or so they claim, at UHD in a 17.3" form factor. It really doesn't get any better than this.

I've done this before with a 15.6" 1440x900 IPS panel from a 2008 MacBook Pro. The unfortunate downside was that the controller overdrove the backlight (CCFL) and killed it after a while.

 

[thewizzard1]

Mayhaps I'll share.
Back in 2004-ish I built up a 15" (15.1" iirc 4:3) 1600x1200 monitor, using a Compaq panel and an made-in-China LVDS converter. Worked fantastic, after getting some firmware bugs ironed out.

Now I'm onto my next project, a 17.3" 4K LCD, based on the same panel some of you other folks are using, and this controller via Alibaba:
https://cndlcd.en.alibaba.com/produ...y.html?spm=a2700.7803228.1998738836.10.e59ifb

Still waiting for parts to arrive, but the same controller I also have aspirations for a 13.3" 3200x1800 display.

I'll share some updates as soon as I make them.

 

[henrygrins]

Finished soldering, drilling, tweaking, and generally hacking together this two-fer box only to find that the NUC uses a 5.5x2.5mm connector! (I had built mine with 5.5x2.1mm barrel connectors. So my male-to-male cable won't fit in the NUC's power supply connector.

I guess this can be easily sorted with a custom 5.5x2.1 to 5.5x2.5mm male-to-male cable, but I'm taking off on Weds for two weeks so probably can't source one by then.

*Edit: god bless Amazon*

 

[henrygrins]

Mayhaps I'll share.
Back in 2004-ish I built up a 15" (15.1" iirc 4:3) 1600x1200 monitor, using a Compaq panel and an made-in-China LVDS converter. Worked fantastic, after getting some firmware bugs ironed out.

Now I'm onto my next project, a 17.3" 4K LCD, based on the same panel some of you other folks are using, and this controller via Alibaba:
https://cndlcd.en.alibaba.com/produ...y.html?spm=a2700.7803228.1998738836.10.e59ifb

Still waiting for parts to arrive, but the same controller I also have aspirations for a 13.3" 3200x1800 display.

I'll share some updates as soon as I make them.

Awesome! I bought a very simple driver for my panel, with DP only. Just make sure yours has a 40-pin eDP connector and cable (it looks like it does).

 

[thewizzard1]

Awesome! I bought a very simple driver for my panel, with DP only. Just make sure yours has a 40-pin eDP connector and cable (it looks like it does).

It's all pre-configured on paper. Should work no problem, and my display driver board has a framebuffer - it'll support multiple resolutions, HDMI and DP, and PIP/POP fun stuff, and even quad-input (4x1080p) simultaneous display.

 

[zovc]

Hey, @henrygrins, I'm kind of getting the impression from your post that you can sort of mix-and-match driver boards and displays. Is that true, as long as they physically connect?

I kind of put this project on the back burner (personally), but am still interested in getting a ~120Hz panel or two for bringing to and from LAN parties.

 

[henrygrins]

Hey, @henrygrins, I'm kind of getting the impression from your post that you can sort of mix-and-match driver boards and displays. Is that true, as long as they physically connect?

I kind of put this project on the back burner (personally), but am still interested in getting a ~120Hz panel or two for bringing to and from LAN parties.

Technically yes. I don't know too much about the eDP standard, but I assume the difference in physical connections comes down to whether or not the backlight inverter is included alongside the eDP lanes. Some of these drivers use pinned connections and some use ribbon style (I'm no electrical engineer, so I don't know the actual terminology). It seems the eDP/LVDS connectors are always a ribbon-style connection, but on the driver side they're either ribbon or pinned.

@thewizzard1 that's very cool. Much moar powuh than mine. The upside of my little DP-only driver is that it's TINY. No big heatsinks and the single biggest surface mount component is the right angle barrel DC input, making the overall board height less than 1cm.

 

[henrygrins]

Mayhaps I'll share.
Back in 2004-ish I built up a 15" (15.1" iirc 4:3) 1600x1200 monitor, using a Compaq panel and an made-in-China LVDS converter. Worked fantastic, after getting some firmware bugs ironed out.

Now I'm onto my next project, a 17.3" 4K LCD, based on the same panel some of you other folks are using, and this controller via Alibaba:
https://cndlcd.en.alibaba.com/produ...y.html?spm=a2700.7803228.1998738836.10.e59ifb

Still waiting for parts to arrive, but the same controller I also have aspirations for a 13.3" 3200x1800 display.

I'll share some updates as soon as I make them.

I did some sleuthing, and it doesn't look like it supports the AUO B173ZAN01.0. I could be wrong, but you might want to check with the seller to make sure it has a 40-pin connector...

 

[Curiosity]

Update to the update to the update: Received my Misumi stuff the other day and built this out:

Obviously I still have a ton of work to do, not to mention getting Mac OS up and running, buying an eGPU of some sort, etc etc etc, but it's a start. You likely can't tell from the pics, but the monitor looks absolutely fantastic. 100% Adobe RGB, or so they claim, at UHD in a 17.3" form factor. It really doesn't get any better than this.

How well does it scale for 1080p?
It's something I always wonder about with UHD panels.
I was pretty set on furthering my iPad display shenanigans but this seems like a better Idea to me.
Edit for clarity:
Scaling for 1080P in the sense of playing something at 1080P fullscreen on the display since I've only got a wee 1060.

 

[henrygrins]

How well does it scale for 1080p?
It's something I always wonder about with UHD panels.
I was pretty set on furthering my iPad display shenanigans but this seems like a better Idea to me.
Edit for clarity:
Scaling for 1080P in the sense of playing something at 1080P fullscreen on the display since I've only got a wee 1060.

It's pretty solid, actually. More akin to the "Retina" experience in Mac OS. You'll simply never see pixels, ever. Even my Skull Canyon NUC with its seemingly wimpy Iris Pro P580 integrated graphics does a decent job in older titles when scaling. I'm using DP alternate mode over the TB3/USB-C port in both Win10 and Mac OS Sierra with no problems. So your comparatively heavy hitting 1060 (which I've actually heard great things about) should absolutely destroy most AAA games at 1080P.

That having been said, Windows 10 is still struggling with the screen scaling in certain apps under certain conditions. I can't say with 100% certainty that this is a Microsoft issue though. I think it's up to the developers to deal with GUI scaling issues (buttons falling outside an unscalable window, for instance).

 

[Curiosity]

It's pretty solid, actually. More akin to the "Retina" experience in Mac OS. You'll simply never see pixels, ever. Even my Skull Canyon NUC with its seemingly wimpy Iris Pro P580 integrated graphics does a decent job in older titles when scaling. I'm using DP alternate mode over the TB3/USB-C port in both Win10 and Mac OS Sierra with no problems. So your comparatively heavy hitting 1060 (which I've actually heard great things about) should absolutely destroy most AAA games at 1080P.

That having been said, Windows 10 is still struggling with the screen scaling in certain apps under certain conditions. I can't say with 100% certainty that this is a Microsoft issue though. I think it's up to the developers to deal with GUI scaling issues (buttons falling outside an unscalable window, for instance).

Awesome, thanks!
I was considering scaling down windows from the full 4K to something lower, maybe even 1080P if the scaling bothers me too much, but wanted to make sure the monitor doesn't do something goofy when it's scaling. (I've heard of displays doing this before when someone tried to run them at 1080p)

 

[ColorZepppelin]

I'd be happy to have ~18-20" if they're available.

Found this LINK might be helpful. It's 1080 21.5" IPS
Guys I'm also looking for a driver board (preferably with DisplayPort and/or FreeSync) that can drive 24 inch IPS panel.
Or alternatively a thin screen that I'd dismantle. Just wondering what's the situation with the cables between the driver board and the panel. Most panels have LVDS or eDP but are these a standard? So could I buy a monitor, disassemble it and replace the cable with a longer one?