# The Monitor Wall



## Guitar (Aug 10, 2014)

Since I started using the other thread as a 'build thread', figured I'd move my progress to the correct forum.

At work, we had 15-20 old monitors, mostly Dell 15", just laying around. I always wanted to do something with them, and only recently did I decide what I actually wanted to do. I figured, why can't I chain these all together and make something out of them? I initially figured it would be pretty expensive as I figured I'd need a huge eyefinity setup or similar. I decided to ask on here, and a few members informed me about the Nvidia Quadro cards and others that use the DMS-59 connectors. My only other fear was that a system would conflict using video cards in parallel in a non-SLI/Crossfire setup. Well, they didn't, in Windows 7 or XP. So I decided to go through with it completely. And here we are thus far.


One of the monitors de-bezeled...they all are similar but slightly different. These I will have to use a Dremel and cut off the part where the monitor buttons hang, and move them to the rear. The other ones I will have to cut off the part where the VESA mount dock connects and two other small tabs to get them as flush as possible.









First video card, after going through 2 not fully working ones. Setup in my kitchen because why not:






Second video card. One full PCI-e and the other a 1x. I decided to however go full for the rest and depending on how they work switch the fourth one to a full as well. 






Took the cards to work (one of these was the non fully working one) since I had a machine there with one full PCI-e and then a 1x slot and tested them. Wes is a coworker. 






De-bezzeled the rest of the monitors at work besides the 4 I have at home. 






I decided screw it, I've got nothing else to do today. Measured up and went to go get a piece of wood. 5/4 x 6 x 8' works great...except the one I got, which I didn't notice until I got home, has a crack at one end of it so I feel like that side isn't gonna be able to be used. Oh well. But I can basically cut them to 4' pieces and I can cut them in half to get two of them, now I'll need two instead of one to finish though. 

I will be putting holes for the vesa mounts all the way through the wood and using a longer screw to screw where the vesa mounts are. I am then going to use a heavier bolt to bring the boards all together in a 4x4 configuration, with 16 monitors total. There will be 4 pieces of wood holding 4 monitors each, then 3 in the middle holding all the 16 together.

My crappy workspace outside in my 1 car garage..my Trans Am isn't in there right now because I've been driving it to work so I have a bit of space.







I should have all the parts below Thursday to finish this, and basically all that will be stopping me then is the mounting of them. I have all these parts to make the PC:

GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3
AMD Phenom II X2 555 BE
4gb DDR3
Corsair TX 750w
120gb OCZ SSD
4x Nvidia Quadro 440 NVS video cards (3x PCI-e 16x, 1x PCI-e 1x right now)
Crappy old case I have laying around

That is it so far! I will hopefully be getting into this by next weekend. The first step will be making sure all the monitors work together. When I get the first monitors all mounted up, the last three rows should come easily. Then it will just be bolting them together which won't be that hard. I just need to line them all up, and since I'm pretty anal that's going to be a big PITA I fear. We shall see!


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## Nordic (Aug 10, 2014)

So what do you plan on showing on your huge monitor wall? Will it be just a work toy or can you actually use it for something work related( I don't know what). This is a cool project.


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## Guitar (Aug 11, 2014)

Anything we want. Initially it started out as a fun thing, then when I chained the 8 together, people at work started to get interested and most of it is funded that way. We will use it to display our builds possibly, do product demos on, display our application stats, whatever. It's kinda also just something to have and say "Look, we built this."

I work at a 'start up' FWIW.


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## Nordic (Aug 11, 2014)

Its a cool project, even better if you will be able to get practical work value for it too. All we need now is a picture of the thing completed.

What will the total resolution be?


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## Guitar (Aug 11, 2014)

The only thing I'm worried about is it being really laggy. The two computers I tried it on both seemed to be really laggy. Both were older machines but they still didn't handle it well..I might be able to speed it up disabling Aero or maybe the fresh W7 install will help. I ordered some stuff and hope to have it somewhat starting to go together this weekend. I also will need to paint the monitors black to aid with the whole coming together effect so it hides the grid better than grey.

All monitors are 1280x1024 I think...and hope because I really want them all to be the same. So I guess 5120x4096 adding them together.


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## Nordic (Aug 11, 2014)

Guitarrassdeamor said:


> The only thing I'm worried about is it being really laggy. The two computers I tried it on both seemed to be really laggy. Both were older machines but they still didn't handle it well..I might be able to speed it up disabling Aero or maybe the fresh W7 install will help. I ordered some stuff and hope to have it somewhat starting to go together this weekend. I also will need to paint the monitors black to aid with the whole coming together effect so it hides the grid better than grey.
> 
> All monitors are 1280x1024 I think...and hope because I really want them all to be the same. So I guess 5120x4096 adding them together.


That is higher than 4k. I dont' know what those graphics cards are meant to support for resolution but that is a lot of pixels.


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## Guitar (Aug 11, 2014)

I'd think they'd support it as one card will only be running 1280 x 4096 (or 5120x1024). 

Per the PNY website, though these are 'HP' cards: http://www.pny.eu/product/p-8-80-132/Discontinued-Products/NVIDIA-Quadro-NVS-440-PCIE-x16/

- Maximum analog resolution 2048 x 1536 x 32 bbp at 75 Hz
- Maximum digital resolution 1920 x 1200 (provided panel supports this resolution)

I assume this is per monitor.


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## Xazax (Aug 13, 2014)

Good luck with the displays! you heading into uncharted territory there buddy, I've had multiple varying problems just running 3 monitors lol! Nvidia is the way to go for multi-monitors despite AMD having more functionality. I ran into an issue with a 270x that would not out-out display to a 3rd monitor, no matter how I had it connected it refused to display the 3rd monitor.

Another issue I had was with 120hz monitors, this is more unique though, in that I needed a special DVI/Display port convertor in order to run 3x 120hz displays off a single graphics card.

Rest assured though I've had that motherboard running 6x GPUs at once! in Windows 7 granted they were not running displays


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## Aquinus (Aug 13, 2014)

Guitarrassdeamor said:


> I work at a 'start up' FWIW.



You should read The Lean Startup by Eric Reis if you haven't already... before you make too many mistakes by working on things that probably aren't that important and won't help the company succeed. Not to say the project doesn't sound cool, but cool doesn't always mean success when it comes to start-ups. I've been down this road recently and have been reflecting on how the last project failed due to over architecting the project and not focusing on just the important things first (as opposed to solving all problems now.) Just thought I would throw that out there since it sounds like you're spending work time on this. Either way, I'm reading that book now and it's a good read. It's useful for just about any person who is part of a start-up or a small software development team.


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## Guitar (Aug 14, 2014)

Xazax said:


> Good luck with the displays! you heading into uncharted territory there buddy, I've had multiple varying problems just running 3 monitors lol! Nvidia is the way to go for multi-monitors despite AMD having more functionality. I ran into an issue with a 270x that would not out-out display to a 3rd monitor, no matter how I had it connected it refused to display the 3rd monitor.
> 
> Another issue I had was with 120hz monitors, this is more unique though, in that I needed a special DVI/Display port convertor in order to run 3x 120hz displays off a single graphics card.
> 
> Rest assured though I've had that motherboard running 6x GPUs at once! in Windows 7 granted they were not running displays



These cards run 2 per DVS-59 port and seems to work well. I've had 8 going with no hitches so I think 16 will be easy. We may see come this weekend!



Aquinus said:


> You should read The Lean Startup by Eric Reis if you haven't already... before you make too many mistakes by working on things that probably aren't that important and won't help the company succeed. Not to say the project doesn't sound cool, but cool doesn't always mean success when it comes to start-ups. I've been down this road recently and have been reflecting on how the last project failed due to over architecting the project and not focusing on just the important things first (as opposed to solving all problems now.) Just thought I would throw that out there since it sounds like you're spending work time on this. Either way, I'm reading that book now and it's a good read. It's useful for just about any person who is part of a start-up or a small software development team.



There's a reason I put start up in quotes. We've been around since 2000 and are privately funded. What I do on my own time is my business, and that's primarily what this is. This has nothing to do with what we produce and even less on the time spent actually on the job. I do DevOps work as well as fixing all in office hardware.


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## Aquinus (Aug 14, 2014)

Guitarrassdeamor said:


> There's a reason I put start up in quotes. We've been around since 2000 and are privately funded. What I do on my own time is my business, and that's primarily what this is. This has nothing to do with what we produce and even less on the time spent actually on the job. I do DevOps work as well as fixing all in office hardware.



It wasn't meant as an insult. I still think it's a worth while book to read and was serious when I said:


Aquinus said:


> It's useful for just about any person who is part of a start-up or a small software development team.


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## Frogger (Aug 14, 2014)

This looks to be a very _fun_ project  for you  Congrats on your work Will be waiting for the pics.


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## Scrizz (Aug 14, 2014)

cool


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## Guitar (Aug 14, 2014)

Should have everything waiting for me when I get home. Got all the adapters I needed today...and I realized I might run into a problem. The cables may not be long enough...and I may need to get a few VGA extender cables....that's gonna suck if so. All cables are ~6 feet so there MAY be JUST enough at least temporarily..but we'll see. These are all except two (four VGA) because I am taking those home to test the hardware tonight:


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## Guitar (Aug 14, 2014)

Had this waiting for me when I got home.






Shit just got real!






Cooling is going to be a concern but I already knew this. Not sure how I'll tackle it yet.


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## Toothless (Aug 14, 2014)

Subbed. I've been watching this and I'm tempted to save up and do something like it.


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## DayKnight (Aug 14, 2014)

Need more PICTURES!!!.


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## Guitar (Aug 15, 2014)

Lightbulbie said:


> Subbed. I've been watching this and I'm tempted to save up and do something like it.


I think the hardest part would be getting the monitors. But if you found a school sale or old office sale, I think you could find a few. Or if you're rich, chain a bunch of 24"+ 1080p monitors together. Lol.

Teasers...system is together. No hitches thus far. Cards are already heating up sitting there so this might require some big old fans on the side...maybe a fan wall for the monitor wall. 

Initial getting everything in the case. I don't do cable management even on my own PCs..so suck it nerds. 






All video cards in and running:











This looks promising...


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## Guitar (Aug 15, 2014)

I had the system running for a good hour/hour and a half and temps didn't seem to get above 63* C...but only one card is running one monitor. We'll see what happens. After I got back from walking the dog...

One down. 






How it sits on the rear.






Aww snap that looks like two:






Is that..a third?






A fourth? You don't say...


















So the problem I'm running into is that I'm somewhat of a self appointed perfectionist/a bit OCD. I really like things to be even and the way I want them...and these aren't. I'm doing this on a shit little section of my shit one car garage with basic hand tools. I'm measuring the stuff by hand, sort of eyeing it as far as measurements, no level, a crappy Harbor Freight drill, and this cheap wood. It's not turning out exactly how I hoped, meaning too it is a lot tougher to get everything lined up then when I first measured it all out and plotted it out on the wood. I bought this piece as sort of a test piece so that's fine..but I'm not sure how I am going to get the other pieces lined up exactly how I need them. I've had to redrill/make the holes bigger on this one and while it seems to be stable, it's not exactly how I want it. Maybe I'll rough mock all of them up and redo them sometime in the future, I'm not sure yet. I want to get it together this weekend if I can. So kind of conflicted.


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## Guitar (Aug 15, 2014)

All video cards seem to work..here's my ghetto little setup to test. I was going to start drilling the other board today but my 'perfection' side is getting the best of me..gonna take everything into the office this weekend and work on it there so that way I have all the monitors there and everything. At worst I get them all setup on a table/cube and displaying without actually being in the wall formation, at worst I end up taking all this stuff to my grandfather's shop and getting it done correctly there in a week or so...I did buy a level and that seemed to help keep the other test piece I was trying out straight..we'll see.


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## Nordic (Aug 15, 2014)

You need a huge panoramic photo for what you have set up right now.


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## Toothless (Aug 15, 2014)

james888 said:


> You need a huge panoramic photo for what you have set up right now.


Good thing with Google you can pick how big you want to search for a picture. Even searching for 4k+ pictures is easy.


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## Guitar (Aug 15, 2014)

You don't mean like this?


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## Frogger (Aug 15, 2014)

Guitarrassdeamor said:


> ..but I'm not sure how I am going to get the other pieces lined up exactly how I need them. I've had to redrill/make the holes bigger on this one and while it seems to be stable, it's not exactly how I want it. Maybe I'll rough mock all of them up and redo them sometime in the future, I'm not sure yet. I want to get it together this weekend if I can. So kind of conflicted.


  I would lay your monitors face down lined up the way you want, I'm a lot OCD that way too. Then make a template of the mounting holes. I like to use cheeeep masking tape making it 5-7 layers thick. Simple to transfer to your back brace & you drill right through


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## Guitar (Aug 16, 2014)

Frogger said:


> I would lay your monitors face down lined up the way you want, I'm a lot OCD that way too. Then make a template of the mounting holes. I like to use cheeeep masking tape making it 5-7 layers thick. Simple to transfer to your back brace & you drill right through



That sounds like a great idea. I'm going to try that tomorrow at work.


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## Guitar (Aug 16, 2014)

And a great idea it was! It still relied on me to drill correctly, which didn't exactly happen (who woulda figured) but it was a crap load easier and more accurate then plotting them by hand. Awesome! I'm home for lunch and to charge my shitty Harbor Freight drill right now. I really need to invest in a good one...this one sucks! Anyways, onto the work...

My cart full of shit. All this fit in my Mustang..and who said you need an SUV!  (I do..I very much want a truck...)







Laid out and waiting.






You can see the two tabs above I have to cut off and the cylinder on the bottom.






Taping off! About 5-6 layers I believe.






About to transfer...cut the sides to make it cleaner.






It worked! Whether subconsciously or not, the size was even almost perfect for the board. Awesome.






Original holes drawn vs the ones from the tape...I actually wouldn't have been too far off (granted I made these closer to the edge) but this worked!






Kind of screwed on. This drill coupled with these screws are a royal PITA. The drill first of all runs out of power quick and has no torque. Whatever. The screws are these cheap ass Chinese screws from Amazon, 100 in the pack, and they strip easy - but not only that, when I'm tightening everything down to get them flush, the heads just love to pop right off. So frustrating..luckily I don't plan on taking this apart anytime soon...at least the four together.






This row came out NOTICEABLY better than the first. It proably helped I gathered the monitors that were the most similar to each other, but the tape method had a lot to do with it. Can't thank you enough for that idea Frogger!






And would you look at this.







Two down, two to go.


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## Nordic (Aug 16, 2014)

Those huge pictures look amazing on that.


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## Guitar (Aug 16, 2014)

james888 said:


> Those huge pictures look amazing on that.



That image is actually 5120x4096..so it's gonna look awesome. I also have another image that is that size, but I like the piano better than the violin. Might have to stitch together some interesting wallpapers myself for this. But we probably won't be seeing much of that.

Just found a handful more cool ones too


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## Nordic (Aug 16, 2014)

I have some nice landscape photos I have taken. Sizes are variable but a common size is 5472x3948. Upscale them a bit maybe. If your interested that is.


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## Guitar (Aug 16, 2014)

Sure. I love wallpapers... I have somewhere between 50-100gb on my PC somewhere - mostly common resolutions though.


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## Aquinus (Aug 16, 2014)

What's your endgame plan with the displays? 4x4?


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## Guitar (Aug 16, 2014)

Yes.

I don't think this PC likes the four monitors. With three it acts fine. With four, I can get to Windows and get to display properties, but when I start applying display things and such, it seems to not like it..bluescreens happened a few times. Why I think it might be the card is even when I had 8 hooked up, when I moved something over to the two corner monitors, they would freak out and I'd get a bluescreen. But then they were fine...so who knows. I took the fourth card out and seems to be fine. Need to diagnose whether it is the card specifically or the problem of having all four. Nothing wrong when they're in the system just when monitors are hooked up.

The transfer of the holes is going fine. However, these monitors are older and the holes are different - no problem I made another transfer sheet. But the issue is they also are not as deep...the screws I have are 40mm which they were kind of long to begin with but the only size I could fine. However they are a lot longer than they need to be for these holes. I have a friend who works at Fastenal who should be able to get me some screws maybe Monday..so we'll see what happens. I did put together all the monitors for mock up at least.






The work station.






All 16.






The 12 working.






So I only actually have two rows 'completed' at this moment, and I'm probably going to redo the first. Then I still have the problem of mounting them in a wall formation - 2x4s with bolts through them are going to be the solution I HOPE...but still not sure how this is going to be actually on the wall.

If you have money...just buy 4 vesa mounts or whatever for however many monitors you're doing and be done with it. This is cheaper but a PITA. Also, I think this would be cooler in a 5x4 formation or even 5x3 which I initially wanted to do...but I also didn't want to have an unused spot. 

That's all for now...maybe some updates this week, maybe not.


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## Frogger (Aug 16, 2014)

Would like to see a shot of the 4x4  from the back to see if your concerns from post 14 were valid.
_Your welcome_


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## Guitar (Aug 16, 2014)

Frogger said:


> Would like to see a shot of the 4x4  from the back to see if your concerns from post 14 were valid.
> _Your welcome_


I think they will be too short for at least the top row...power cords luckily we have a bunch and a fair amount of long ones. VGA cables, I have a good amount of, but not this long. It does look like length is going to be an issue, I had to use an extender on just ONE in the top left corner and I could've switched the cable out with a slightly longer one but didn't - unless the PC is mounted really close I am going to run into an issue. However, I've been contemplating a few different ways I want to run all the cables and securing them to the back and all that, so we'll see what happens..I need to get all 16 on boards first and I'll worry about cable management last probably.


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## Aquinus (Aug 16, 2014)

I would try disabling aero and/or changing the primary display to be the top-left most display. It's entirely possible that it's not happy driving 3D on so many cards at once. I assume you're using the latest nVidia drivers as well?


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## Guitar (Aug 16, 2014)

Aquinus said:


> I would try disabling aero and/or changing the primary display to be the top-left most display. It's entirely possible that it's not happy driving 3D on so many cards at once. I assume you're using the latest nVidia drivers as well?



I was going to disable Aero for performance and that may help. And yes latest drivers of course.


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## Jetster (Aug 17, 2014)

Very cool


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## Peter1986C (Aug 17, 2014)

It will be a pain in the butt though to get the contrast, colour settings etc. equal, unless they are the exact same model. Still, nice project.


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## Guitar (Aug 17, 2014)

Yes it is going to be, even with ones of the same kind because some are so old and might not even be working properly..gonna be super fun!

I think Aero was the problem...got them all to display and stay, moved a window across all, no problems...except the GPU cores reaching 70* for one or two of them. No fans on the side yet so we'll see if that helps but might have to end up making an enclosure or do an open case style thing with PCI-e risers..we'll see. Getting them in wall formation comes first.


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## Toothless (Aug 17, 2014)

I know with Win8.1 that you can disable the task bar on all but one monitor. Might help to make it look better.


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## Guitar (Aug 17, 2014)

I'm hoping UltraMon will allow me to disable them all except on the bottom row.


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## Guitar (Aug 22, 2014)

I may have the screws I need tomorrow to get this going again...friend ordered me some 35mm M4 screws instead of the cheap Chinese 40mm ones I was using..too long and the heads broke off because they were pieces of crap. I plan on finishing it this weekend along with redoing the first row if I can get them tomorrow. May or may not have them mounted - since we are moving offices, I unfortunately am not sure if we'll actually have them displayed. The best I think I'll do is get them setup with 2x4s and sort of sitting upward. We'll see.


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## Guitar (Aug 23, 2014)

Went to work today and started to work on it. Nothing went right. These screws are better and the right length but the holes I drilled on the board were apparently way off. Did another board, way off. Like 3-4 of the monitors have one of the screw holes fucked up now, one of them has two because they aren't very sturdy. I'm getting discouraged, this is not fun. Taking a break from it and not sure what I'm gonna do yet. Really need a drill press and a good template because apparently either I'm drilling like a retard or the holes are for some reason way off when I lay down the tape on the wood...some were a whole half inch off almost and it doesn't make sense to me. I need new boards now (I have one good one and have to still do 3 rows of monitors) and just not sure what I'm going to do with it at this point.


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## Toothless (Aug 23, 2014)

Lots of duct tape and glue might help.


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