4K GAMING AT 120Hz - ON DIY MONITOR!?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,620 words · ~8 min read
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here at Linus tech tips we know we are occasionally
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a little late to the party for example uploading videos about a new apple
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product days after the initial coverage wave has come and gone you know it is
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what it is we try whatever get off my back
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but not today no what i'm showing you guys today
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is not stale at all in fact
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i don't think i'd even describe it as ripe yet i mean look
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it doesn't even have room in the box for the power adapter it's just
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it's just separate this
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is the first look at the full 4k 120 kit
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but what's that and where did it come from
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browse privately and securely with tunnelbear the simple vpn app start your
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seven day free trial at the link in the video description
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okay so first things first i gotta say i'm a little unnerved by this box
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because there is no friggin way
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that a monitor and a stand for a monitor
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are fitting in here and like look at this
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we got like a handwritten note here take care
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made by hand and then we've got the name
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of the guy aziz who made it so this is z's from z's works
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oh boy wow what the heck
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this thing is just like a completely naked panel and
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oh my gosh there's just like exposed pcbs on the
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back there's no stand no plastic housing um
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too it's credit okay to its credit it does have a vase amount here but
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no way okay there's only three there's only
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three mounting points here um
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there we go i i got it and i oh this is
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i think i found the nut okay so we've got it mounted now we just
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used this um random monitor ARM that we
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found and look at this weird stuff we got
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going on here so this right here
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is a jtag programmer for updating the
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firmware of and debugging the main chip
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and this like taped on doodad here is
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actually a usb to serial adapter for debugging
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everything else the monitor comes with a
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heap of technical documentation to help
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you do all of these things and you can even reprogram the led backlight driver
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if that tickles your pickle okay so it's
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probably clear to most of you by now that the reason
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this thing is here in our shop is clearly nothing to do with how polished
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and finished it is as a product it's because it's the first
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monitor to reach our lab that runs at
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3840 by 2160 4k
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at 120 hertz that's right you gamers can have your
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cake and eat it too with high resolution
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and high refresh rate but how did a small fish like
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aziz pull this off before the big dogs like
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ASUS and acer who showed off their high refresh rate displays at ces this year
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a quick implementation of the displayport 1.4 standard and that is a
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negatory general uh because check this out we've actually got two
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DisplayPort inputs here one right there
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and one right there so i guess let's
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start by firing it up with just one connected
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um
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there uh okay so check this out there's
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no normal on-screen display but
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it does have these completely unlabeled
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buttons up here that hold on a minute
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is this thing completely held on by one screw at the top
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okay so as i was saying it has these unlabeled buttons that helpfully
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come with this handwritten user guide to
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tell me what they're for so there's power oh so oh sorry no power is labeled
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so why don't we start with that one we'll press it
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wow that turns on really quickly okay so
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the next two are for adjusting brightness okay so
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technically there's a label there there's a plus and a minus oh yeah you're doing pretty well here and then
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there's other ones for switching between a bunch of different edid profiles for
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reported resolution and refresh rate starting with
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540p at
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480 hertz and
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wow this looks pretty crap um
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i mean it it has like an interlaced look
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to it and quite honestly like in motion
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even the tn pixels can't switch fast enough to avoid having like a a purple
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trail behind black objects but boy does that ever feel
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butter smooth wow then the next switch is 720p at up to
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300 hertz which is still really darn smooth
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and is at least i can tell if it's a ct
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or a terrorist at this resolution compared to 540p the next one is 1080p
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at up to 240 hertz and i can see how
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this feature would be useful when you look at how quickly it switches modes if
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you're the kind of person who often finds yourself dialing back the
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resolution to get more FPS out of games like cs go
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and then wants to turn up the resolution for sightseeing games like uh
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civilization vi or skyrim i mean these buttons really do make switching super
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easy or maybe it's dumb let us know in the comments if you think you would
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actually use these or not
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so okay here we are 1080p 240 hertz
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pretty sick but it's not the native resolution so
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you're dealing with interpolation and there are already monitors that are
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actually designed to run at that resolution and that refresh rate
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so then let's get finally to good old-fashioned
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4k 60 hertz and then
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um okay so we were expecting 4k 120 hertz here
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but we got a visual demonstration of the limits
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of displayport 1.2 it just can't push that much data
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so instead it has to compromise
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let's plug in a second displayport cable
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well that didn't happen in any of our testing before we go to film
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you can see the right side of the screen is a little bit uh wonka but
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we have still had for the first time the
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experience of 120 hertz gaming at 4k
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resolution and given that we've got this game running at about 150 to 200 FPS
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it is definitely a thing to behold now
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is this the optimal situation with the whole thing going on with the uh
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flickering on the right hand side of the screen and all that
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obviously not but i guess velo learned a valuable
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lesson about shipping
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display controllers that literally have unstable
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pinned onto the back of them so in summary then
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aside from this glitchiness right when we go to film
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this works but how do you buy one
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the answer is you don't yet
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and you may never be looking at a traditional
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finished monitor from this works
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their special sauce is in the development that they're doing on custom
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electronics and the concept that they want to crowdfund is the idea of diy
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enthusiasts being able to buy their module and slap
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it onto an existing panel whether through a bundle from zeesworks or off
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ebay or whatever there will always be drawbacks
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to an approach like this the calibration and display tuning that
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goes on with a finished product was clearly not present on our intellux
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m280dj dash l30 and you won't get fancy
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features like g-sync anytime soon but
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zswork has tested other options like a 39-inch mba panel and they say it works
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pretty similarly and they're also expecting costs for diy monitor
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solutions like this to be hundreds of dollars cheaper than 120 hertz 4k gaming
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monitors from traditional companies so yay or nay
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diy mix and match monitors and electronics
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whatever you guys say down in the comments below i know i'll be watching
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this concept really closely have you ever thought to yourself
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if only there was some easy affordable way to make my own website
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well you're in luck because squarespace is just that you pick one of their
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gorgeous templates and whether you coach the local softball team or you run a
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the pictures and text you want and boom you've got a website that looks great on
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any device with responsive design and a
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ton of other great features it starts at just 12 bucks a month and you get a free
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domain if you buy squarespace for the year and if you just want a super simple
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so why wait why not sign up for squarespace today start a trial with no
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credit card required and when you decide to sign up for squarespace permanently
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head over to squarespace.com forward slash LTT and
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use offer code LTT to get 10 off
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