6 displays, 1 graphics card, 1 DP-MST Adapter

rzaiser · February 21, 2023

Hello everyone,

I once again need the help for all the professionals here at LTT, hoping to find a solution to the following problem. Also, I hope this is the right forum to post this in.

I ordered a new workstation for my workplace, because I wanted an upgrade to a 6 display setup. Our IT provider made an offer for a setup that included two Asus Dual GeForce RTX 3050 OC (8GB DDR6) in the system. I told them that the graphics card is way too pricey for what I need (office work, a lot of productivity tools, excel sheets and some occasional graphic design/photo editing), therefor I asked them to downgrade it to two "cheaper" graphics cards that still would support 6 displays with Full HD resolution at 60 Hz. Apparently they did not want to do that and said, this is the "cheapest" solution they could offer for the system. So, after some research online, I decided to get just one card and a Display-Port MST adapter, thinking that I can use 3 out of 4 ports on the card for direct monitor connection and to split the last DisplayPort on the card with the adapter into again 3 separate monitors.

Yesterday I configured the entire system, windows recognized the 6 displays but will only connect to 4 of them. In the display settings of Windows 11 displays 5 and 6 are set to "Disconnect this display" - if I choose to extend to it, Windows randomly disconnects any other remaining display.

After that I tried to connect the displays to the onboard graphics card (after enabling the iGPU in BIOS to "always on"), which also has 1 HDMI and 1 DisplayPort - first I connected only one of the two remaining monitors and it worked - all 5 showed up. After rebooting with the last monitor connected, something odd happened. The two remaining displays were mirrored and had a maximum resolution of 1280x720, the option to set it higher was greyed out.

Then I tried to update the GPU driver and setting up the multiple displays in NVIDIA Control Panel - here I ran into the same issue as in Windows display settings - 6 Monitors were shown, but when I checked the 5th it displayed the message "this GPU support up to 4 displays" - I kind of get that, since it has only 4 ports, but isn't that exactly what the MST adapter is for? To split the signal running through a single port? I mean, if I connect the MST-Adapter to my laptop, which also has only one port, it still can use all 3 displays and the laptop screen. It is strange that a card like the RTX 3050 can't...

Do you see possibility to make this setup work without buying an additional graphics card? I already talked to IT again, asking for the cheapest card they have on stock that would support 2 displays and would still be compatible to the current mainboard- they offered the MSI GT 1030 (GF GT 1030, 2GB DDR4, PCI 3.0 x4 Low-Profile) but I did not order it yet because I wanted to first check here if there would be any solution with the current setup.

Here are all the details of the workstation:

Displays: 6x DELL P2422H (4 on DisplayPort, 2 on HDMI)

MST Adapter I bought via Amazon: Cable Matters Triple 4K DisplayPort Splitter (Mini DisplayPort Hub ) with 2X 8K DisplayPort 1.4 and 1x 4K HDMI for Windows, NOT Compatible with macOS (Link for further description of the product)

1 x power supply ATX 2.4 SEASONIC Focus GX, 750 Watt, 80 Plus Gold
1 x mainboard ASUS Prime Z690-P D4-CSM, LGA1700, ATX
1 x processor INTEL Core i5-13600K, LGA1700, 14 cores
1 x RAM CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16 GB Kit (2x 8GB), DDR4 3200MHz
1 x graphics card ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 3050 OC, 8GB GDDR6
1 x SAMSUNG 980 Pro Solid-State-Module, 500GB, M.2, NVM Express, PCIe 4.0
1 x HDD 3,5" SATA 6Gb/s WD Red Plus, 1TB, 64MB Cache

Thank you very much in advance for any help and response.

Kind regards,

Richard