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27" Apple Thunderbolt Display

Stephen Beers
Go to solution Solved by Stephen Beers,

In conclusion, NO a basic female thunderbolt to male DP adapter does NOT work to be used on PCs, it was worth a shot to try, and NOW I'm educated on this subject, I thank you all for your inputs, and questions about my conundrum, but sadly was unsuccessful...

I'm going to give as many variables as I possibly can, so I can get as accurate to the answer I can... I just got an Apple Thunderbolt Display 27". I've tested this display on my Early 2011 Macbook Pro 15" and it works 100%, and I'm not sure if I'm just not connecting something correctly or I need to find the right adapter or cable, but I can't seem to get it working on my PC. (Maybe it doesn't) The display has 3x USB 2.0, firewire, thunderbolt, and 1Gb RJ45 port, built into the back of the display, I'm not sure the specifics of the firewire, or the thunderbolt, and there's an extra cable built into (I couldn't pull it out, so as far as I know it's built-in) which has a thunderbolt, and Magsafe 1 (It's a Y cable). The graphics card on my PC is a GTX 1060 3GB, and I have a Z270 PC Mate Mainboard.

My question is, how can I get it running as my display for my PC, if possible?

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If you are trying to use the iMac as a second display for another computer, it won't work.

 

EDIT: Did not realize this was the monitor, not mac ?

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12 minutes ago, Stephen Beers said:

can't seem to get it working on my PC

how were you even connecting it to the 1060

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I guess I left that part out! Haaha. My roommate has a Thunderbolt to DP, so I connected that cable from the 1060 to the display's IO on the back

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so you are using the thunderbolt adapter backwards and trying to adapt the 1060 to be compatible with thunderbolt?

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Yes, I believe so. Also, when I got this display, I also received with it a Thunderbolt to USB-C adapter, which I tried to connect directly to my mainboard.

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By the looks of it, I think its a mini display port on your mac monitor.

You can buy display port to mini displayport adapter. (not so sure).

You can't run thunderbold on the GPU since it's not supported.

There's no thunderbold support in the mainboard specification.

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4 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

By the looks of it, I think its a mini display port on your mac monitor.

You can buy display port to mini displayport adapter. (not so sure).

You can't run thunderbold on the GPU since it's not supported.

There's no thunderbold support in the mainboard specification.

On the photos I included, it shows the little thunderbolt logo on the monitor

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6 minutes ago, Stephen Beers said:

On the photos I included, it shows the little thunderbolt logo on the monitor

Yes but it's a mini display port input that you connect to the thunderbolt output on the mac.

It has thunderbold icon as a reference (there's no dp on new macs, but there's many on old macs).

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13 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

Yes but it's a mini display port input that you connect to the thunderbolt output on the mac.

It has thunderbold icon as a reference (there's no dp on new macs, but there's many on old macs).

I guess what I didn't realize was that the female thunderbolt port on the back of the display was an output, not input.

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12 hours ago, Glenwing said:

You did plug in the main power cable right?

I tested the power cable of the display by plugging in the magsafe 1 cable to my MacBook, and it WAS charging. I would be lying if I said I've never had a mistake like that before! I really do appreciate your guess though

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Just now, Stephen Beers said:

Could I theoretically get a mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter?

Or mini DisplayPort to full size DisplayPort adapter?

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From what I remember years ago, the Thunderbolt Display only works on a Thunderbolt port and isn't backwards compatible with mini DisplayPort

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38 minutes ago, bseidlyork said:

From what I remember years ago, the Thunderbolt Display only works on a Thunderbolt port and isn't backwards compatible with mini DisplayPort

Well, I did order one yesterday, so I guess I will let you know if it works when I get it. I also talked to someone at Best Buy, and they THINK it does, but I'm going to try anyway, and see what happens

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In conclusion, NO a basic female thunderbolt to male DP adapter does NOT work to be used on PCs, it was worth a shot to try, and NOW I'm educated on this subject, I thank you all for your inputs, and questions about my conundrum, but sadly was unsuccessful...

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