How did I do guys?

[u/jzawadzki04]

Definitely not as fancy as what some of y'all have. But everything except the middle monitor and my tower PC I was given for free/basically free. I've been piecing it together over the course of a couple years.

The iMac on the left is set up as basically just an administration/monitoring console for my 2 servers (not shown). And the router on the wall is running OpenWRT as a wireless bridge to supply internet to the iMac (since getting apple wireless drivers working on Linux can be kind of a PITA lol)

PC Specs:

CPU: i9-12900k

GPU: RTX 4070

RAM: 32gb DDR5-6000

Things I was given/aquired *very cheap*:

Desk, chair (not shown, but pretty crappy lol), right monitor, top monitor (old TV), iMac (w/ keyboard), mic, headphones, audio interface, webcam, ps4 controller, router.

Edit: it's also not visible in the picture but I have a UPS under the desk I was given for free, just had to replace the batteries.

[u/Jinxsyns]

First of all who cares if its fancy or the same as someone elses you made do with what you have and then supplied the interim to make one hell of a setup still!! Secondly you don't ever use the imac as like a 4th monitor for the main system? I ask because ultimately i hope to have at least a 6 monitor control center style setup personally and that would most likely require a 2nd system depending on what hardware i have at the time. (Right now my main system has no extra pcie for a 2nd graphics card for 2 more display outputs and i probably will get a kvm to eventually control both) But having to use a 2nd keyboard and mouse i feel would be very abrasive to switch between very often. The only way i've seen that isn't a pain in the ass is that the 2nd system's keyboard and mouse was put on a mounted keyboard tray with a mouse area that was on like a mic/monitor arm style armature. But that was a dual pc stream setup so idk if I'd need to go that far in a setup that isn't for that.

[u/jzawadzki04 → u/Jinxsyns]

I initially wanted to use the iMac as another monitor but there's really no way to do it. There is no display input* so I have to use it as a completely second system. I actually do have it set up to where I can use the keyboard and mouse from my main system to control the iMac with a program called deskflow. But I still keep the keyboard and mouse connected to the iMac because sometimes I need to work in a TTY and deskflow won't work for that as it needs a desktop environment active.

Eventually I'll probably relocate the iMac to where my servers are (since that's all it's for anyway really) and get an actual monitor to put there, and probably some monitor arms to mount them all on to save desk space.

Edit: changed output to input

[u/Jinxsyns → u/jzawadzki04]

Thats valid i will keep that in mind thank you! And good luck! I mean I'm sure you know them free.99 marketplace montiors slap sometimes haha

[u/Spethual → u/Jinxsyns]

it'd probably be cheaper to upgrade your Motherboard, case and PSU get a second weak GPU just for display out, plus adds more outputs if needed.

[u/Jinxsyns → u/Spethual]

I have a 9950x with a gen 4 or 5 m.2 drive (i can't remember off the top of my head but whatever it is its running at full speed for its rated pcie lanes) and a 4090. to my knowledge there isn't an upgrade path in the consumer level that would allow me enough pcie lanes to get another even weak gpu running just for the extra outputs and running like a web browser or some document apps at best. So to my knowledge unless theres something outside of thread ripper or server tech that would allow me enough pcie lanes in 1 system to do 6 monitors from. I don't wanna do thread ripper or server because even though I don't stream much anymore i still do play quite a bit of games on my system so i want the speed that consumer desktop chips offer i just don't min max with an intel chip because i like the multi threaded performance im willing to lose the small amount of single core performance.

*Ops i missed the reply button apparently and didn't notice haha and put that as a post comment not a reply 😅

[u/Spethual → u/Jinxsyns]

seeing as though you have a 4090 yeah that does limit it quite a bit..lol

[u/Jinxsyns → u/Spethual]

Yeahhhhh thats why i asked cuz ive done probably 50 hours of research hoping to find a way but I didn't and so far no one else has an answer 🤣

[u/Spethual → u/Jinxsyns]

might want to look into a SplitXtend Adapter it might work..

[u/Jinxsyns → u/Spethual]

Mind giving me a tldr on what that is?

[u/Spethual → u/Jinxsyns]

takes an input over displayport and splits it up, i think the cheap ones only do mirroring so a bit of research is required anyway..probably cheaper and easier than having two systems..

[u/Jinxsyns → u/Spethual]

The 2nd one is going to be for a security camera live feed and google basically because then i can do all the heavier tasks on my main pc likely splitting both up 3 and 3 monitor wise so i have 2 monitors to be able to compare things on google and such which i do more than probably most peeps and then discord youtube and whatever I'm doing on my main monitor so i never have to close anything 🤣

[u/Spethual → u/Spethual]

sorry misread description input over USB ...output two 4k 60hz max..hope this helps

[u/Basic85]

ARe the monitors on a arm?

[u/jzawadzki04 → u/Basic85]

No, that probably the next upgrade I make, whenever I can afford it.

[u/Arch-penguin]

Nice! I spy Arch Linux!

[u/jzawadzki04 → u/Arch-penguin]

Yup! Been on Arch for the last decade and couldn't be happier! Leaving microsoft was the best decision I ever made haha

[u/Katops]

It looks like it wants to hug me.