Building (or buying) a rig to push 4 monitors

Hi all, I am somewhere between a noob and ...

Ok, no. Let’s not start that way. I’ve been around computers for a very long time, but I like to keep things simple. I never need the latest gear, never need the shiniest, never need the best. All I need is good enough. So I’ve mostly bought laptops until now, and connected them to an external monitor.

Now, I’ve finally got to the point where I want to buy/build a desktop because I need to run four monitors, and I can’t find a way to run one reliably from a laptop. Also, I occasionally run games, and I’m having trouble running things like Far Cry 4 and Assassins Creed on my current setup.

Open to inputs and insight. Again, I never need the best stuff. I’m never going to see the difference between 1080p stuff and 4K, and even if I did, I wouldn’t care. I don't need to eke out max framerates when I play games.

What I’m looking for is something that will serve me decently now, with potential for upgrade in a couple years. I run the various office suites, and occasionally some graphic and video rendering. You can see my current setup in the My System Specs to the left.

I don’t want to spend more than $600, so I’m going used/refurbished. My plan is to buy a 4th or 5th generation i7 rig cheap off eBay, and upgrade to the Kaby Lake in a couple years.

Please help me with insight as to logistics. Maybe I’m just going about this wrong and need to be educated?

The only thing I absolutely need is that it power 4 monitors reliably. I am going to be taking it out of the country for at least 12 months. All I can do to identify locale is say it is tropical climate, and heat and dust are likely to be an issue. Not a huge issue, but at the out-of-country location, my current rig runs temps in high 40’s to low-50’s during normal operation: Office, and multiple browsers, multiple tabs.

Under load: older games, games + VLC runs in the high-70’s I routinely do the compressed air blowout.

I appreciate any advice no matter how small. I'd hate to buy something that won't run the four monitors. Thank you all.

This should probably have been started in the General Thread.

Hi PlatypusKnight,

Does your $600 dollar include the second-hand purchase plus the Kabylake upgrades?

Most GPU's over £100 will be able to run 4 monitors at once.

The issue with upgrading from a 4/5th Gen to 7th Gen is that the motherboard chipset and DDR change so you will need to completely replace the Motherboard, CPU and RAM. This upgrade will be around $600 if you want an i7.

Hi Declan,

Thanks for your input.

Does your $600 dollar include the second-hand purchase plus the Kabylake upgrades?

No. Does not include this. The Kabylake upgrade I figure I'll do two years from now.

$600 is for the rig plus two monitors.

What I want to buy now is a Broadwell or Skylake i7 rig with 8-16GB RAM and enough graphical oomph (graphics card?) to run 4 monitors 24-27 inch.

DeclanT said:

Hi PlatypusKnight,

The issue with upgrading from a 4/5th Gen to 7th Gen is that the motherboard chipset and DDR change so you will need to completely replace the Motherboard, CPU and RAM. This upgrade will be around $600 if you want an i7.

No issues with this whatsoever. That's fair.

What I don't want to do is buy a rig that will need a new $400 graphics card next year, or something where I can't pull out the innards and replace the motherboard CPU and RAM when it's time to upgrade. (Like this laptop I'm using for instance).

PlatypusKnight said:

What I don't want to do is buy a rig that will need a new $400 graphics card next year, or something where I can't pull out the innards and replace the motherboard CPU and RAM when it's time to upgrade. (Like this laptop I'm using for instance).

4 output GPUs are common these days so you shouldn't struggle to find a cheaper one that fits your budget. Would want a higher spec GPU to assist in video production? A second-hand GTX 970 should do the trick as it is capable of 4 simultaneous outputs and it has 4gb of VRAM.

Anything specifically wrong with this purchase?

Two GeForce GTX on Ebay

PlatypusKnight said:

Anything specifically wrong with this purchase?

Two GeForce GTX on Ebay

Never mind. I realized that the seller is mistaken and it's not the GTX 970.

For the price of them GPUs you could get a brand new GPU. It might not be as powerful, however, you will receive full manufacturer warranty. Depend on if you believe you will need the extra processing from a GPU