Widescreen Gaming Forum

I finally got round to building my new rig this weekend, and realised as I unboxed everything that I'd forgotten to order new DP cables. I was about to order some this morning when I started reading worrying things about Dell monitors and DP cables..

I have 3 Dell U2311H screens which are connected via DVI to my existing SLI setup (2x GTX580s). This setup is fine.

The GTX980s in the new rig only have one DVI connection each, but three DP (plus an HDMI but my Dells don't have HDMI) so I was planning on switching everything to DP.

The issue I have read about though is that most DP cables have the power pin connected, and that the Dell firmware puts the screen to sleep when it detects this, so my options appear to be:

1) Find compatible DP cables that work with my combination of screens/cards.
2) Use DP to DVI cables? <--- don't know if this will work!
3) Buy new screens. <--- really don't want to do that just yet!

Has anybody heard of this, or can offer evidence to the contrary?

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Rig 1: Intel i7-4790K Devils Canyon | ASRock Z97X Killer Intel Z97 Socket 1150 | Noctua D15 cooler | 16 GB G.Skill TridentX DDR3-2400 | 500GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD | Corsair AX1200i | 2x EVGA GTX980 4GB ACX2.0 (SLI)

Rig 2: Intel i5-2500K | ASUS P8P67 Pro Intel P67 LGA1155 | Corsair A50 cooler | 4GB G.Skill RipJawsX DDR3 RAM @1600mhz 6-8-6-24 2T | 128GB Crucial RealSSD C300 SSD | Corsair AX1200 | 2x Palit GTX580 1.5GB (SLI)

I've been using Dell U2311h for a while now, with an AMD 7970 card and two miniDP to DP cables and I had no problems at all.
Just make sure you buy the cables at a place where you can return them if they don't work.

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We gonna send it to outa space!

Ok thanks. Got three on order. Fingers crossed they work.

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Rig 1: Intel i7-4790K Devils Canyon | ASRock Z97X Killer Intel Z97 Socket 1150 | Noctua D15 cooler | 16 GB G.Skill TridentX DDR3-2400 | 500GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD | Corsair AX1200i | 2x EVGA GTX980 4GB ACX2.0 (SLI)

Rig 2: Intel i5-2500K | ASUS P8P67 Pro Intel P67 LGA1155 | Corsair A50 cooler | 4GB G.Skill RipJawsX DDR3 RAM @1600mhz 6-8-6-24 2T | 128GB Crucial RealSSD C300 SSD | Corsair AX1200 | 2x Palit GTX580 1.5GB (SLI)

For completeness (in case anybody else comes looking for this info) I ordered 3x 3m UGREEN DisplayPort cables from Amazon and connected all three of my Dell U2311H displays to one of my GTX980s as described in the NVIDIA surround control panel.

Interestingly they wouldn't work at first (machine booted but nothing on my screens) but as I still had my DVI cables hanging around I managed to get to my desktop to install the latest NVIDIA drivers. Once they were installed and I'd rebooted, magic!

It seems to take a lot longer to warm up the displays, even when soft booting, to the extent that I never see my full screen logo or the 'Press F2 to enter setup" message - in fact, by the time the screens come on I am already on my Windows desktop (gotta love SSD!).

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Rig 1: Intel i7-4790K Devils Canyon | ASRock Z97X Killer Intel Z97 Socket 1150 | Noctua D15 cooler | 16 GB G.Skill TridentX DDR3-2400 | 500GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD | Corsair AX1200i | 2x EVGA GTX980 4GB ACX2.0 (SLI)

Rig 2: Intel i5-2500K | ASUS P8P67 Pro Intel P67 LGA1155 | Corsair A50 cooler | 4GB G.Skill RipJawsX DDR3 RAM @1600mhz 6-8-6-24 2T | 128GB Crucial RealSSD C300 SSD | Corsair AX1200 | 2x Palit GTX580 1.5GB (SLI)