Thunderbolt Monitors

[Cogiter Ekloo]

I have a late 2012 Mac Mini and my current 1080p monitor is failing and I would like to replace it with a Thunderbolt Display or a display that has Thunderbolt port. I am aware of Apple's own Thunderbolt Display. However this will not work for me because I have a Windows computer that I use for gaming so it will have to share the new monitor and as far as I know Apple's Thunderbolt display does not work with Windows machines. So I need a thunderbolt monitor that can work with Windows. Any ideas?

 

[Bifurcated]

So I need a thunderbolt monitor that can work with Windows. Any ideas?

This is an interesting question. Windows computers don't support Thunderbolt, period.

But... after a little Googling, I was astonished to find that LG does create Thunderbolt monitors. E.g., these two:

34UM95

and

LG IPS Monitor 27MB85Z | 27" LG ColourPrime? Monitor- LG Electronics UK

support both TB2 and HDMI.

That won't help you with your Mac Mini, though, since it has only TB1.

I'll be interested in what others have to say.

 

[Cogiter Ekloo]

These monitors would definitely have worked for me, but as you said it looks like I'm out of luck because of Thunderbolt 1 on my Mac mini. I wish Thunderbolt was like USB where it is backwards compatible with the previous generation.

 

[Cogiter Ekloo]

The current video card in my PC has DVI and HDMI ports but I do intend to upgrade the video card very soon and I think most of them now have display port. I certainly hope that there is a display port to Thunderbolt adapter because if that were the case I would definitely buy Apple's Thunderbolt Display. All I would have to do then is ensure that Windows will recognize the Apple display and its native resolution. Thanks for your suggestion, I'm going to look further into this and see where it leads.

 

[Cogiter Ekloo]

I have been doing some more research on this and there is an incredible amount of conflicting information out there. According to a few that I've read the display port method will most likely not work due to a lot of different factors including diverse PC configurations. There other ways to make it work but they all involve a lot of technical acrobatics.There seems to be one path that looks more feasible than the others and it involves some hardware and virtualization software. One method hinges on me having a recent PC motherboard that has Thunderbolt built into, I would then install Lucid's Virtu software which will transmit the video signal from the graphics card to the thunderbolt port through virtualization. The thunderbolt display will then be plugged into the thunderbolt port as usual, so essentially the software tricks the display into thinking that its signal is originating from the thunderbolt port. However this method will not work for me because my PC's motherboard does not come with thunderbolt. But there is a solution that involves installing a Pcie card that adds Thunderbolt to my PC and ASUS does sell these cards. I would therefore have to install this card in a free pcie slot on my motherboard and then link it by cable my graphics card by a cable and install virtualization software to make the whole thing work. As I said it involves some technical acrobatics but I may have no choice but to pursue this method because the alternative would be to purchase two monitors with the needed ports but work space is at a premium for me, not to mention the cost of 2 quality monitors.

 

[Bifurcated]

Insane hackery.

Holy crap, that's crazy.

What ports does your Mac Mini have? I don't remember, but doesn't that one do HDMI? It sounds like your solution is to get a standard monitor rather than a TB display.

By the way - rash prediction - 12-18 months from now, there will be a new 5k TB display to match the new Skylake MBP series, and there will be a flood of current TB displays available cheap on eBay.

ETA: what's your actual use case? If you're mainly using the mac you could run the PC headless and use Windows Remote Desktop to access it. If you're running games, you could try Steam's remote play service - it works really well.

 

[Cogiter Ekloo]

My Mac mini does have an HDMI port, in fact that is how I currently have it hooked up to my failing monitor. Yes I could get a another standard 1080p display that has an HDMI port, but as a gamer, I'm trying to "future proof" myself by getting a higher resolution monitor that runs at 60 frames per second. With the respect to my PC this would not be a problem even the video card I am currently using, can handle certain resolutions beyond 1080p provided that as a gamer, the monitors refresh rate and fps are at 60 or above. The problem is on the mac mini side because I'm pretty sure the mac mini's hdmi spec is 1.4 instead of the newer 2.0 spec (which allows for higher refresh rates). The 1.4 spec is really only good for 1080p monitors but will have problems with monitors that go beyond that. I therefore thought that my solution would be to approach this from the thunderbolt side but then that creates problems on the Windows side. Ideally if I was not on a budget the simplest solution would be to buy a Mac Pro and a thunderbolt display. Since the Pro has enough horse power to handle current games I would no longer need a PC.

 

[Cogiter Ekloo]

It only has an HDMI and Thunderbolt port. With regards to HDMI, it will work provided my new monitor does not have a resolution higher than 1080p and my plan is to get a monitor that is higher in resolution than 1080p for "future proofing" purposes. Beyond 1080p, my HDMI spec has to be 2.0 to avoid potential problems, unfortunately I believe the HDMI spec for the mac mini is 1.4 so I'm out of luck.

 

[Bifurcated]

And yet, I wouldn't get the current Mac Pro. I'd wait a year for Skylake to get TB 3 support.

Just get a cheap 1080p monitor for now to tide you over. You can get a decent 27" 1080p monitor for a couple hundred bucks, which will be awesome for gaming. Then upgrade properly in a year (or when you can afford it.)