Could Someone Give me Advice for Connecting Multiple Monitors to My Laptop?

General
1

Hello there,

I have a laptop that I use for both work and gaming. It is a pretty decent machine with an Intel i7 processor; 16GB of RAM; and an NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti graphics card. The laptop itself has an HDMI port and a USB-C port that supports DisplayPort.

I have recently been considering expanding my screen real estate by adding multiple external monitors. My goal is to set up two additional monitors for a total of three screens; including the laptops built in display.

This setup is mainly for productivity purposes; such as multitasking between different applications and occasionally for gaming.

I have read that using a docking station or a USB-C hub can simplify connecting multiple monitors. Could someone recommend a StarTech product that would be suitable for this purpose? :thinking: Ideally; I would like a solution that can support two 1080p monitors in addition to my laptop screen.

How does using a docking station or hub affect performance; especially when it comes to gaming or graphics intensive tasks? :thinking: My primary concern is ensuring that there is no noticeable lag or drop in quality when using external monitors.

What kind of cables and adapters would I need to ensure everything works smoothly? For instance; do I need specific types of HDMI or DisplayPort cables; or are there any StarTech adapters that you would recommend? :thinking:

Also, I have gone through this post; https://community.startech.com/t/how-to-setup-an-extended-display-in-windows-golang/ which definitely helped me out a lot.

Are there any other tips or considerations I should keep in mind when setting up multiple monitors with a laptop? :thinking:

Thanks in advance for your help and assistance. :innocent:

2

Hello Robert - I hope you’re well!

The biggest advantage of a hub over a docking station is portability and cost effectiveness as they do not typically come with a power supply and rely on power supplied by a connected laptop. However, this may come at a disadvantage of performance as a docking station that includes a power supply can support more features at the same time without stability issues. StarTech.com spec’s out a power supply for every docking station that will provide sufficient power for supporting all features at the same time at maximum performance and we ensure this is the case through rigorous testing.

If your setup doesn’t require portability, I’d recommend a self-powered docking station.

There tends to be three strategies for supporting multiple displays via a single USB-C connection:
Thunderbolt: Provides direct access to one or two video streams (almost all Thunderbolt systems provide two video streams) directly from the graphics card. This will provide identical performance to the display being direct-attached to the GPU supporting the USB-C port on the laptop for two external displays.

Multi-Stream Transport (MST): Windows, ChromeOS and Linux support MST (MacOS does not). This allows a single video stream to route DisplayPort packets to multiple external displays through a single connection. Although this is a great alternative to Thunderbolt when not available, there can be some reliability issues (such as the odd flicker, longer for displays to wake from sleep) and functional issues (such as open Windows being swapped from one external display to another when the docking station is disconnected / reconnected). We have software called Connectivity Tools that allow an end-user to save their window layout and mitigate this issue with a single click.

USB Attached Graphics: Using a USB 3.x Gen 1 (5gbps) connection, many of our docking stations also utilize an external graphics chipset from companies such as DisplayLink or Magic Control Technology. Although this adds a low-power graphics card to your setup and doesn’t leverage your existing GPU in the laptop, and will not be suitable for gaming or workstation applications. This does, however, provide a means to easily add 2-4 external displays if your system doesn’t support Thunderbolt / MST, using a software driver.

In your situation, I’d recommend considering a Thunderbolt docking station if this feature is available on the laptop. Otherwise, being a Windows PC, you can also try MST as a solution.

We’re always happy to discuss the technologies, but we’re also happy to take the headache off your plate. If you find it convenient, drop the make / model of your laptop and the potential make(s) and model(s) of any displays and other peripheral devices you wish to connect, and I can come up with a recommendation and we can go from there.

All the best,
Brent D