Quiet 4K multi-monitor DisplayPort graphics card help

They make noise, too.

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David Nystrom
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Quiet 4K multi-monitor DisplayPort graphics card help

Post by David Nystrom » Fri Feb 27, 2015 12:09 pm

Gents, I hope you'll have mercy on a poor newbie.

I need to build an engineering workstation for our engineering laboratory. I want the workstation to be quiet--silence is not essential.

The workstation is to have two displays. I prefer DisplayPort as it supports 10 bit color, and I'd like for large resolutions to be a possibility for future growth.

The only passively cooled graphics cards I've found with more than one DisplayPort output are obsolete Matrox cards limited to 2560 x 1440.

I've seen some R7 and GTX 750 cards out there which are passively cooled, but they all only have one DisplayPort.

Now, the card does not have to be passively cooled. It simply needs to be quiet. The PC is going to be in an engineering lab, not a sound recording studio after all. The trouble is that it's not like Newegg states dB levels or fan RPM speeds on graphics card specifications.

Can any of you make any recommendations? A somewhat modern GPU and a large amount of video memory are preferred, but bear in mind no video games will be played on this workstation.

CA_Steve
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Re: Quiet 4K multi-monitor DisplayPort graphics card help

Post by CA_Steve » Fri Feb 27, 2015 12:53 pm

Welcome to SPCR.

Have you thought about getting monitors that support daisy chaining? Then, you'd only need one Displayport 1.2 connector and could use just the output of the integrated gfx (if your build uses a CPU with integrated gfx).

Tzupy
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Re: Quiet 4K multi-monitor DisplayPort graphics card help

Post by Tzupy » Fri Feb 27, 2015 1:06 pm

Depending on budget, Asus Strix GTX 960 with 2GB or 980 with 4GB, both with 3 DP. Most GTX 970 don't have many DP.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS ... _OC/4.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS ... _OC/3.html

CA_Steve
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Re: Quiet 4K multi-monitor DisplayPort graphics card help

Post by CA_Steve » Fri Feb 27, 2015 1:58 pm

Tzupy wrote:Depending on budget, Asus Strix GTX 960 with 2GB or 980 with 4GB, both with 3 DP. Most GTX 970 don't have many DP.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS ... _OC/4.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS ... _OC/3.html
Talk about using a bazooka to hunt flies. :)

quest_for_silence
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Re: Quiet 4K multi-monitor DisplayPort graphics card help

Post by quest_for_silence » Fri Feb 27, 2015 2:43 pm

David Nystrom wrote:The workstation is to have two displays. I prefer DisplayPort as it supports 10 bit color, and I'd like for large resolutions to be a possibility for future growth.

AMD FirePro, either a W5000 (DP 1.2) or a V4900 (DP 1.1), any of them fitted with an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Plus heatsink.

David Nystrom
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Re: Quiet 4K multi-monitor DisplayPort graphics card help

Post by David Nystrom » Mon Mar 02, 2015 8:20 am

Thanks for the help gentlemen. It seems like the Strix is the way to go.

mczak
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Re: Quiet 4K multi-monitor DisplayPort graphics card help

Post by mczak » Mon Mar 02, 2015 11:56 am

quest_for_silence wrote:AMD FirePro, either a W5000 (DP 1.2) or a V4900 (DP 1.1), any of them fitted with an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Plus heatsink.
DP 1.1 can't drive 4k displays at 60Hz (only 30Hz). That said, technically the V4900 (using Turks chips) should be DP 1.2 capable, but I'm not sure the driver for this card actually allows selecting 4k resolutions without hacks - seems at least at some point it did not.
There's also a Club3d R7 250 EyeFinity 4 card out, which has 4 mini-DP ports, which should allow for 4 4k displays all at 60 Hz if I'm not mistaken. Certainly the 3d power isn't really all that great (still better than that V4900 above though) but if you're just interested in hooking up multiple 4k monitors for cheap this ought to do the trick. I fear though despite the relatively low power consumption it would need an aftermarket cooler since the heatsink/fan is tiny.

quest_for_silence
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Re: Quiet 4K multi-monitor DisplayPort graphics card help

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Mar 02, 2015 12:10 pm

mczak wrote:There's also a Club3d R7 250 EyeFinity 4 card out
I guess that it does not support 10 bit color, does it?

Tzupy
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Re: Quiet 4K multi-monitor DisplayPort graphics card help

Post by Tzupy » Mon Mar 02, 2015 3:49 pm

David Nystrom wrote:Thanks for the help gentlemen. It seems like the Strix is the way to go.
How important is the 10 bit per channel colour support? It seems that nVidia hasn't yet enabled 10 bit support on GeForces, only on Quadros.
Similar situation with AMD, only some of their workstation cards support 10 bit. Also some card / app combination can break the 10 bit flow.
As for the monitors, some claim to be 10 bit, but are 8 bit native, some detailed research is required.

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