Question The Search for a Second Screen

[Aikouka]

I've made a lot of changes to my setup recently, and it has thrown a giant-sized wrench into everything. Essentially, I purchased a Level1Tech's KVM and combined that with a MacBook Pro + Dock to allow me to switch between the laptop and my main desktop.

I started off with the following monitors...

1. ASUS ROG Swift PG279QZ
2. ASUS PB278Q

However, it should be noted that my PB278Q's DisplayPort had started malfunctioning a while back, and I had to resort to HDMI. My belief is the poor design of the chassis put to much strain on the DisplayPort cable, which damaged the port. (It was almost always at a bit of an angle.) Anyway, I ended up purchasing a DisplayPort-to-HDMI cable so I could use the PB278Q with my setup; however, I ran into a problem rather quickly... the monitor refused to go to sleep. This hadn't been an issue before when I was using a standard HDMI cable connected to my video card. So, I swapped out the PB278Q with an older monitor, and then I was using....

1. ASUS ROG Swift PG279QZ
2. ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q

This was a troubled pairing from the start, because as soon as I plugged in the second monitor, my computer BSOD'd. It was a "Page Fault in Non-Paged Area" in nvlddmkm.sys (i.e. the Nvidia drivers). Awkwardly, while this setup seemed to work fine with the KVM, Nvidia's drivers never liked the pairing. My assumption is that the PG279 is a newer variant of G-Sync and the PG278Q is an older variant. For example, the PG278Q has Nvidia's 3D Vision. I ended up buying a new monitor and replacing the PG278Q, and then I was using....

1. ASUS ROG Swift PG279QZ
2. ASUS PA278QV

My original secondary display was one of ASUS's prosumer displays, and I figured I'd try it again... especially since this had a far better I/O area that wouldn't damage a cable/port. However, there was one thing that I didn't look up about the monitor... it refuses to go to sleep in a dual monitor configuration when using DisplayPort. The monitor will actually go to sleep, but right before the first display goes to sleep, the PA278QV will just turn back on and stay on. However, this works fine with the DisplayPort-to-HDMI cable... or so I thought. Today, I ran into a very odd problem that seemed specific, but I have since found that it occurs more than I initially thought. What happened is that I hovered over an image on Amazon, and the monitor just blanked out. When I moved the cursor, the monitor came back. Essentially, if I zoomed in on the right portion of first image, my monitor would lose its picture until I moved the mouse off of it. This was very repeatable as it happened every single time. Awkwardly though, if I shrunk my window a bit, which adjusted Amazon's zoom area, it didn't happen. However, since then, I found a site where it happened so long as I was at a specific point, which is weird given that I browsed that site just fine earlier.

Anyway, the point is that the PA278QV isn't working for me either, and I'm really not sure what to go with. I'd like to pick up something local so I'm not waiting over a week to get my setup working again, and my only desire is that it's 27" (or bigger, but 27" is strongly preferred), QHD, and IPS/PVA (good color and viewing angles). Best Buy has the Dell S3220DGF, HP Omen 27i, and the Lenovo Legion Y27q-20. I'm not really blown away by any of these. They also have an LG model, but I saw complaints online about the inability to disable deep sleep, which is a no-go for me. (With two displays, I cannot have my windows constantly reshuffled.) Also, if anyone knows how to get my two ROG Swift monitors to play nicely together, I certainly like the "free" price tag that I get with that option.

 

[aigomorla]

My advice on dual monitor setup.

IF you are going to stack them side by side, pair the monitor up as much as possible as mismatching monitors looks really ugly.
Also sometimes they don't allign perfectly, which makes it look bad.
If you have OCD or some variant of it, it will drive you crazy.

If you don't care, i would go with the second monitor in a portrait position, as having the window long down is much better productivity wise then wide side.

As or me, i have a ultra wide used for gaming in regular landscape mode, and a forum browsing / productivity monitor in portrait.

So ultimately my advice... if stacking side by side, mirror the brand and make of monitors or use the lower brand one in portrait and put the better one in landscape as your main.

 

[Aikouka]

As a bit of an update, I ended up returning the PA278QV. It was a bit of a bummer, because similar to what Rtings reported about the monitor, it has really nice colors out of the box. After doing a bit of research on (27" WQHD) monitors that Best Buy offers, I ended up going with the HP Omen 27i. The reason why I went with that monitor is that it has explicit sleep control settings in its options menu, which means that my windows and such won't jump around when the monitor goes to sleep. However, the Omen 27i has two major issues that made me return it. The two problems are poor out-of-the-box picture quality and bad horizontal viewing angles. I could technically fix the prior with a calibration, but the latter is a big issue as I'm using it as a second monitor.

What made matters worse is that even though I switched to a new monitor that used DisplayPort, I still had issues with the KVM. Although, to be fair, they were far less pronounced than before. It took about 4-5 days to get a hard crash on wake where it was easily repeatable with the two G-Sync monitors. All in all, I gave up on the KVM and decided to just swap inputs. This meant that I didn't really need to replace my monitor anymore.

So, I'm back to the trusty old PB278Q. Although, I'm planning on removing it tonight so I can tear it apart. Since I want to swap inputs, I'd like to replace its mainboard with a board that has a working DisplayPort port. The problem is that from what I can see, there are two revisions of mainboards for the PB278Q, which means I need to tear it apart to see which one I need to get.

IF you are going to stack them side by side, pair the monitor up as much as possible as mismatching monitors looks really ugly.
Also sometimes they don't allign perfectly, which makes it look bad.
If you have OCD or some variant of it, it will drive you crazy.

I know what you mean. I use a dual monitor arm setup, and I'll be slightly tweaking the position at times to get it just right.

 

[OlyAR15]

Can’t you just turn off the display?

 

[Aikouka]

What I ended up doing was putting my older G-Sync monitor in as the second monitor temporarily, tearing apart the older ASUS ProArt display, buying a new mainboard off eBay (it had multiple revisions, so I had to see what I needed), and installing it. The monitor acts fine now; however, I may need to be careful about the DisplayPort cable that I use. I'm still leaning toward the cable having ruined the port previously. (The shape of the monitor's frame causes thicker cables to be pushed out a bit.)

Probably some things that I wish I would've known... consider marking the position of the electronics (or their enclosure) prior to removing it. It will make putting it back easier, and there's no harm in regard to marking the back of the panel. The second is that it seems the tape used (to attach the electronics enclosure to the panel) doesn't really work great in reapplication, so it might be better to have some on hand to replace it.

Can’t you just turn off the display?

Wouldn't that depend on the display? I used to turn my monitors off manually in the past, but after I swapped from DVI to DisplayPort, it kept messing up my windows and icons. I'm not entirely sure how it works.. if it's just dependent upon the controller in the monitor or something? I think some of the monitors that I have can just be turned off without an issue.

 

[LucyaSmity]

I am using ASUS ROG Swift PG279QZ and I want to say that I am totally satisfied