Can I use my second monitor off of my motherboard?

[Rozga123]

So I have a 1070 strix GPU and my primary monitor (1080p 144hz) is plugged in it via display port. I recently got a second monitor (1080p 60hz) to use as a secondary, now for reasons that are too long to explain I am unable to plug it into my GPU as well. So I was wondering if I could use the secondary one through my motherboard hdmi port (I have an i5-8400, which I believe has an integrated gpu). I would only use it for discord and browsing, and keep the gaming to the main display. Is this a viable solution, or is there something I should know?

[Semper]

it shouldn't give you much issue. I did much the same back when I had my 4790k.
I did have to manually enable the iGPU in UEFI settings to get it to work, however. It may or may not be 100% plug-and-play in that regard.

[DigitalGoat]

1 hour ago, Rozga123 said:

So I have a 1070 strix GPU and my primary monitor (1080p 144hz) is plugged in it via display port. I recently got a second monitor (1080p 60hz) to use as a secondary, now for reasons that are too long to explain I am unable to plug it into my GPU as well. So I was wondering if I could use the secondary one through my motherboard hdmi port (I have an i5-8400, which I believe has an integrated gpu). I would only use it for discord and browsing, and keep the gaming to the main display. Is this a viable solution, or is there something I should know?

As Semper says you may need to enable the iGPU in the BIOS, but that assumes the motherboard will allow for both the integrated and discrete GPUs to operate at the same time. Some boards only allow one type of display type at a time.

Another potential issue is that on boot up the HDMI monitor connected to the iGPU may be given priority until Windows loads, meaning if you want to access the BIOS then that monitor will need to be turned on to see an output.