Heya, I’m the guy who put this together. Let me know if you have any questions about it! I’ve had the setup for about a month now and absolutely love it.
How is the panel? Do you have any uniformity issues? In total, I've tried 7 units of LG 5K UltraFine (27MD5KA-B and 27MD5KL-B). All had [1] uneven brightness (visible on white background) and backlight bleed. Some of the units also exhibited tinting and/or faint vertical lines. I couldn't swallow these issues for the price that I've paid. Now I'm with Dell U2720Q, but I miss the high PPI of the 5K.
The genius part about this is your two "monitors" look the same. This is literally a significant part of why I've never purchased an iMac. Now you've given me an idea...
Target Display kind of sucked in that you needed a fully functional installation of MacOS running the entire time too. It’s nice that the feature was there of course, but I never found it pleasant to use.
The problem is the Cinema Display doesn’t look identical to the iMac. I like have monitor symmetry, but there was (maybe until the M1’s mini) a gulf in hardware between the iMacs and Minis. Especially the pros.
How did you go about determining the board was ok to plug into a shinny new panel?
My previous experiences with Aliexpress where a bit hit and miss. Either with issues of using obvious counterfeit parts or batch quality issues (order 100 and 70 are OK, etc.).
The supplier was great! I think I received it within a week of ordering (which considering I'm in the UK and it was coming from mainland China is pretty impressive). Here's a link to the exact part and supplier I used: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001192011831.html?spm=a2g0s...
Does your display have glass in front of the panel? For some reason I find myself touching the glass surface of the 5K iMac a lot, which I probably shouldn't do to a bare panel.
On a side note, for anyone planning to buy a monitor please spend the extra bucks to get one with adjustable height, tilt and rotation if possible. And if you've missed that boat then grab yourself a monitor stand and a Vesa mount/adapter from Humancentric [0].
I previously had many negative associations with VESA-mounted monitors, and I think other people have as well, due to poor-quality mounting arms. I've used VESA-mounts where monitors bounced every time someone walked by; that's a serious issue.
When I started working from home full-time, I set up a high-quality VESA-mount system using a pole mount and a professional monitor arm; the service I purchased it from actually looked up the monitor specs to figure out the level of support the arm required. The resulting setup is rock-solid and always stays exactly where I place/tilt it.
So I do think VESA-mounting can provide a great experience, but the difference between cheap and high-quality can make or break the resulting experience.
It rotates. The stand just rotates with it. I'm not just being cheeky, it's actually pretty easy to move around. The stand is so thin and flat that I liked having it be a place where I slide in my keyboard when I want some desk space.
My main workstation is currently a PC with monitor on an arm, but honestly, I found the iMac to be a cleaner setup. Literally the only display-related issue would be height adjustment, but that wasn't a problem for me.
I specifically ordered the VESA iMac model because of both the limitations of height, etc, and the space on your desk that is freed up by using a mounting arm.
I use 2x27" 4K LG's (good panels for the money, ~£350 each) on a cheap (but honestly awesome for the money) dual vesa arm that is incredibly comfortable, having them up off the desk gives me more space on what isn't a huge desk (WFH) I couldn't go back to use regular stands, having the monitors essentially float in mid-air is ideal for me.
They're both extremely similar; you really can't go wrong for <$25. I actually have 3 of the cheap one now, only 1 (the initial order) of the more expensive one. They're functionally identical for my usage; and it's a huge ergonomics win no matter what.
Also, if you have a desktop mic, buy a microphone arm for it; is similarly fantastic price-vs-value proposition (though monitor arm is massively more useful upgrade just due to how much you use it).
I’ve used amazon basics single arm wall mounts for the last 3 years, and dual arm deskmount for the last 2 years. They are pretty good quality, I’ve had no reason to look to replace them with another brand.
edit: apparently I have the premium version. Not sure they used to be called premium. The spring mechanism counterweight makes adjustments to my 27 and 24 inch monitors seemless.
I love these. I had stopped tinkering with devices many years ago. These days you can't even replace the ram of a machine without spending a week making sure it is compatible. Nevertheless it is still possible.
I got my inspiration back after watching [DIY Perks](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQo7nzH1sXVpzL92VesANw) on youtube. If you want a much more detailed instruction on how to build these screens, I highly recommend him. As intimidating as all our devices are today, all you need is to unglue the plastic housing to reveal their secrets.
PS: people love to throw away perfectly fine electronics. There is no shortage of practice devices by the dumpster.
It’s been slim picking for 5K monitors- especially if you’re not on OSX where thunderbolt dispay output is much more complicated.
Besides the (now discontinued) Planar IX2790, which had severe quality control issues (went through 4- all with major dead pixels and burn-in), I don’t think there are any readily available DisplayPort-based 5K monitors out there :(
Feels like hidpi displays have pretty much stagnated outside of apple ecosystem
Yeah. I don't like to use 4K monitors with 15" Macbook Pro, because the latter has 16:10 screen (with emulated 1920x1200 resolution, with 2.25 real pixels for every emulated pixel), while typical 4K monitor has 16:9 aspect ratio with 1920x1080 emulated resolution (4 real pixels for every emulated pixel), so you'll actually loose vertical desktop estate, unless you run it in non-high-dpi mode which looks just ugly.
It’s not only about pixel density, although that’s important. Most importantly, 5k gives you integer scaling for a resolution of 2560 × 1440, which is perfect for 27 inch. If you can get similar results with another setup I would love to hear about it.
This and exactly this!
I’d love to get one 27 inch 5K monitor for my work(looking at code and text) and have integer scaled MacBook Pro resolution. That would be perfect. But, it’s silly that there are zero choices in EU at the moment. The LG ultra fine is taken out of stock due to some EU regulations, and there is nothing else :-(
"The LG ultra fine is taken out of stock due to some EU regulations"
Is that true?
I bought one about two weeks ago from Saturn, for 19% off. Still waiting for the delivery though. According to "geizhals.de" there are a few stores that still have it in stock.
The wholesale vendor for DK says there is some contention with EU regulations that prompted them to hold on all orders :-( he does not know which regulations they are.
It matters for everything on macOS, which achieves non-integer scaling by rendering to a larger frame buffer then scaling down the entire image to the panel resolution.
MacBooks for the last few years have shipped with a scaled mode enabled by default to give more screen space, I always bump it back down because I hate how fuzzy it makes everything look.
I don't know how text is implemented, but based on my experience, it matters. On my 13inch MBP screen text and everything else is incredibly sharp. I hope someone more knowledgeable can chime in.
I've been very happy with a '5k2k' monitor, I have the MSI Prestige PS341WU. The resolution is 5120 x 2160 at 21:9, and it's basically a stretched-out 27" 4k monitor, so same height and vertical resolution, just wider.
Gives enough real estate to have three 'panels' of windows, and it's all one monitor: I find that two-monitor setups mean I have to either always tilt my neck left and right, or set up one centrally and then really kink to the side to view the other one.
4k @ 28, I used to run 1.5x but eventually switched to 2x because I did want kinda larger stuff due to myopia.. actually it's not that comical once you get used to it.
The returns are diminishing, but if your eyesight is good a 5K monitor is much nicer to work with. Ultimately the reason 4K took hold was part marketing and part display interconnection/GPU technology. The Mac was pretty much alone in driving 5K adoption.
The UP3218K was released in 2018 and pretty much stands alone in that space, for the same reasons.
I believe it's the result of the semi-random crystallization of the effective consensus about what word to use. Partly also what feels like "the next one after".
The Apple interface is highly consistent. The fit and finish on their products is also highly consistent. I assume that this is a quality that Apple users enjoy.
Personally, I find the bezels on both monstrous, so I wouldn't go for either.
Using dual displays with the second one not being the exact height/bezel-size/shape as the other is distracting and is less of a nice experience than when both displays are the same.
Usually with an iMac, the second display is always something else, this is a nice way to make the overall experience nicer.
The LG Ultrafine looks and feels like the same cheap shells that every monitor vendor uses, and doesn't fit the Mac aesthetic. It's really weird that Apple finds that fine to sell, but then again desktops at the low end don't seem to be their biggest thing these days.
I have legitimately considered just buying the Pro XDR because I want a monitor that looks good on my desk. I'd have pulled the triggers but the rumors about the new iMacs started, and I want to see where they go - I didn't buy an older iMac as I refuse to buy an Intel Mac at this point.
I can’t explain why, but having the top bezel be thicker than the bottom just looks pain wrong to me. Outside of that, I think it looks fine. The running joke is that it’s called the UltraFine because it’s the most “ugh, fine” monitor you can get for $1200.
Appearance aside, anecdotally I’ve seen numerous reports of quality control issues (dirty screen effect, backlight bleed, pinstripes, wobbly stand, etc).
The pricing of the Pro Display XR makes it kind of „vaporware“. The difference is it does exist, you can buy it but with this insance pricing almost no one will buy it.
The old displays were a thing because they had really been affordable.
Just like reference monitors which are much pricier, it doesn't mean they have no reason to exist.
This Apple Display fits in a strange zone in between reference monitors and high quality "regular" displays (which the previous Apple [Cinema||Thunderbolt] Display went at) that no one else went for.
The question is, is there a market for that niche or is that a "Vader trash can" Mac Pro mistake again?
Interesting. Wonder if the next iMac release will be M1-only - which would be pretty bad for a large part of the "creative audience" that iMacs are supposedly targeted at, given that the infrastructure is not there yet to make the switch (e.g. in music making, the plugins will take years to catch up and get rebuilt).
I've been using a 40 inch 4K monitor in another setup and it works well for coding at 100%. Entire functions on screen without the need to scroll. But anything else than coding the resolution is a bit grainy at 4K.
Do you have any neck pain :). Seriously, I used to have a 24 inch display in landscape mode right next to a 32 inch monitor and I had terrible neck pain. I couldn't turn my head to the other side where I had no monitor.
I switched back to a single 32 inch and increased the scaling. Neck pain went away.
Oh wow, that sounds bad! No, no neck pain at all. I am also scaling the resolutions. I use the monitor in front of me as my main monitor, and the other ones just for supporting information like docs. Also a comfy chair which can turn helps!
Great project! I did a similar project 3 years ago to save the use of the great screen in a 2009(?) 24” iMac with a broken logic board. Learnt about LVDS and went the Chinese control board direction. First iteration was an HDMI cable poking out. Second interaction was integrating a Raspberry Pi for a new-old all-in-one PC - plus, it felt much snappier than the original Core 2 Duo workings from the Mac.
Tangential. Using my monitor in portrait mode has been a game changer for me. Now when I look back I wonder how is it that I wasted so much display space.
I got a 27" monitor which is essentially 2 portrait mode monitors fused together.
When I could get hold of a 30" monitor years ago at work it was a real eye opener for me. I always had double screens but I tended to used only 2/3 of those screens and one was always to far off to the side to be more usefull than occasionally glance at.
Now with a 27/30" screen I can have 2 windows side by side within my field of view, of 1 large windows and 2 smallers ones like terminal.
That... thing is disturbing to look at, that being said the first thing I started looking for was the price, and it’s predictably expensive considering that it’s just a great aspect ratio for a 1920p 26” screen.
I’d pay about $500 for a square 2160p 30” screen. But then I’m a cheapskate and I have no way to justify even the $500 cost when I could get a couple 27” 2160p’s on sale for that.
This is something I just can't comprehend. For work, I am using a 16" MB Pro and I had to get a separate screen for it as I cannot connect it to my iMac for display. One would think it isn't too uncommon for iMac owners also to have a laptop.
And if I could use my iMac as a screen, I might have grabbed a M1 Mac already. Instead I am waiting on a refreshed iMac.
I use Screen Sharing to have my Macbook screen show on my iMac. Works flawless over Gigabit, except that cmd-tab sometimes lags. There are tools available[0] that allow you to set a higher resolution for a screen than what would be sensibly supported by the LCD panel. Although it doesn't do retina this way.
That's interesting to hear, because my experience is that I really really _want_ to use Remote Desktop / Screen Sharing but the performance has gotten worse and worse over macOS releases, and it currently abysmal over gigabit, and even 10-gigabit, wired Ethernet. (I could not see any difference between 1Gbps and 10Gbps which made me think bandwidth is not the problem).
I'd love for this to be some flaw in my own setup, though.
I used to use this setup circa Mac OS X 10.6 and it worked very well (1Gbps wired connection). I could leave my home office and screen share in from the living room via my MacBook Pro from the living room, when I had to watch my kids or whatever.
Today, I don't even try that. Command-Tab lags, yes, but almost everything lags to the point of being super-annoying to use. Even typing lags. I also have a Windows box in my office, and this setup basically works (even from my MBP). So I've been assuming this is one of those features that Apple has let degrade to the point of unusability.
But am I wrong? I'd like to be. Are others using Screen Sharing or Remote Desktop on macOS with success beyond like click... wait... click... whew I got a system update installed? I mean, for like typing emails or coding?
(One thing I'd been thinking of debugging was whether my office Mac having 3 5K screens is an issue — I am only trying to screenshare one of them, but maybe they have a bug or something where total pixels of the host kill perf even if those pixels aren't being shared.)
One issue I had is that it was constantly using the WiFi connection instead of the wired one. So I created a shortcut where I replaced the hostname with the wired IP address, this solved a lot of problems for me.
For my usecase of development, it works fine. No noticable lag, even as I type this comment, also video calls and web browsing/scolling/youtube are fluid on 2560x1440 using around 7MB/s.
With 3 5K screen I could image video memory or some GPU bandwidth being an issue, limiting the screensharing although sharing only 1 screen. But the problem must be either one of lag or one of bandwidth. Maybe try measuring network throughput and ping?
Maybe try using a 3rd party remote desktop system with focus on performance instead of the standard vnc server included in mac? Parsec might work for your use case. The disadvantage is these kind of remote desktop system achieve the performance by utilizing lossy codecs instead of lossless compression used by vnc, so you might notice some banding/artefacts depending on your network condition / compression level. The advantage is the hardware encoding/decoding is very fast, even fast enough for gaming.
I think it was just at the time when 5k iMacs were introduced there was no (good?) way to support that resolution over a thunderbolt or what, so support was dropped. Then it was just never added back...
The 5k iMac was really ahead of it's time in late 2014. I remember reading some technical blog talking about the custom designed driver board for that panel.
The 2015 MacBook pro could drive a 5k panel using two displayport cables (some 5k monitors from that period supported that solution for full resolution at 60Hz), and with modern displayport there should be no problems, but maybe Apple does not really want their computers used as 'dumb' displays anymore...
Apple already has Sidecar that turns your iPad into a monitor. It's not a stretch to enable that feature on Mac so you can turn your Mac into a monitor too whenever you need it for some reason.
That is another sad story. As far as I know, Sidecar works in both directions, you can use it to make your iMac a monitor for another mac. However, there is a huge catch: those two devices need to run on the same Apple ID. Which of course makes it impossible when trying to connect your work with your private computer. Of all companies, Apple should have an understanding of keeping your work files in a separate environment :p.
It seems like this was a technical limitation more than a business one. Apple had to do some very non-standard stuff for 5K and that's when they stopped supporting the target display mode. See the article as well - the only was the author could get it work was with two display port connections, so if Apple were to support target display, they'd likely have to put in two display ports in the back just for that.
It would be nice if all all-in-ones / laptops had target display mode. The versatility would be great.
The number of times I've wanted to use, say a console when the TVs taken, or use my mini-itx desktop away from home. Being able to plug into a laptop that im carrying anyway would be great.
At the same time, the latest iPad Pros connected to a Macbook via USB-C provide a remarkably convenient and performant second screen experience when doing dev or other creative (multi-screen) work on the road.
The magnetic mount of the iPad Pro magic keyboard means you can just grab the iPad and pop it back, making it super convenient to use either way.
Absolutley, I have 3 old iMacs with perfectly good displays that I could only use by running the computers attached to them (via VNC or similar). I would definitely pay 150 bucks like in TFA for a driverboard that would allow me to rip out the Mac-parts and only keep the display...
While it a useful feature, it was always an expensive and wasteful way of buying a secondary display. Arguable it was the only way of making a dual-display iMac setup look good.
I wouldn't deem it wasteful. Monitors have evolved a lot slower than computer parts generally and using a monitor for a relatively long period is quite common with desktop PC users. A midrange 1920x1200 display bought 10 or 12 years ago is quite similar in specs compared to today's low end displays.
A few years old 4K and 5K iMacs have high end integrated displays even from today's point of view, but their CPUs and especially GPUs are outdated for quite a few serious use cases. I think it would make a lot of sense to use one as a display for a new workstation setup.
But obviously my described use case is a "second chance" for an iMac having served as a standalone computer until its EOL.
Very cool. I wouldn't mind having this. Right now my setup is my MBP and a 27 4K screen that I use as the primary. I thought about using two 4K or 5K screens and rather change to a Mac Mini, but in which direction would I be looking? If I'd look ahead with two screens, I would look at the space between the two screens. In other words, I actually prefer to have a "primary" screen and I keep wondering whether one actually needs another screen at all. What do you guys think?
I use a similar setup for the same reason. 32“ 4K Dell and a MBP.
When I was still using a dual screen setup I had one in the center as primary and one at the side in portrait mode.
Having dual screens next to each other with the space between the screens in front of you sounds like an ergonomic disaster. Some people seem not to mind though.
Question, why would it require two displayport cables and two outputs from a video card? A displayport 1.4 cable and connection are supposed to support 5K at 60Hz.
if its the dell control board (I've got the dell) it predates the faster DP standards. It only supports 5k via dual link. Which is why a couple years ago when the newer 5k displays came out, I snapped up mine from some guy on ebay upgrading and selling it at fire sale prices (nothing like new hardware to lower the value of perfectly good old stuff).
This is correct! Though there is a newer driver board which supports USB-C (and thus one cable), but it's a lot more expensive. And since I was connecting to an 2015 iMac, wasn't needed in my case.
Because the Dell UP2715K has 10 bits per color channel, even DisplayPort 1.4 HBR3 would not be enough. It would work with Display Stream Compression, but that appears to be an optional feature of DP 1.4 that is not universally supported. Also, the compression is lossy.
Additional speculation: all 5k displays on the market so far (LG, Dell, Iiyama, ...?) were made as Apple accessories, probably with Thunderbolt ports in mind. Because the market is not that large they might share some components. TB3 only requires DP 1.2, but can carry multiple streams. The expensive LG display includes a TB3 hub that demultiplexes the DisplayPort streams and sends them off to a dual-link DP controller. Less expensive displays leave out the Thunderbolt part and require dual DisplayPort inputs for full resolution.
Right, so DP 1.3 which supports "32.4 Gbit/s with the new HBR3... a 5K display (5120 × 2880) at 60 Hz with 30 bit/px RGB color" is enough.
The UP2715K, only support dual link DP 1.2/HBR2, which was a bit of a PITA on my machine because nvidia's board partners don't always do a good job of describing which ports on the back of the card can be used for dual link.
Someone should release a "kit"... the new boards and power supply could even sit inside a nicely designed backpack enclosure on the stand.
Is there any possibility of accessing the needed display connectors via the RAM door or via a surgical cut in the back case? Removing the screen is what I don't want to do.
I'd pay a bit for a kit to upgrade a Cinema Display to 5K.
I"m writing on a Cinema Display right now. It's a fantastic display with great design, but needs a resolution bump.
Tape, and glue are bad! Falling off glued door hinges on GM cars were an apex of engineering stupidity.
Glue cannot provide stiffness as such. Hard adhesives, soft adhesives, filler, no filler, all inferior to any mechanical connection. Adhesive is usually the worst of possible compromises.
Hard adhesive is stiff, but dies from most minuscule repeated stresses.
Soft adhesive does not die to repeated stresses, but isn't stiff.
High fill adhesive layers absorb loads, but can't stiffen anything.
Low fill adhesive layers are stiff, but put all stress into the surface-adhesive interface.
Even if you have it in a recessed niche, and use high fill soft adhesive over primed metal surface, you already made enough operations to warrant a proper joining method.
