Minimum upgrade for dual LG Ultrafine 4k?

[AioiYuuko]

My current setup, as in my profile, is an i5 2500K in an ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3, with a 7970 GHz Edition driving dual Dell U2412Ms (1920x1200). I've been happy with this for a good 5 years of general use, as well as about 3 of Hackintosh (many thanks to this community for the fantastic tooling). However, since I got a 2016 MBP, I've been missing Retina/HiDPI when looking at my desktop monitors. I was happy to find that the LG Ultrafine 4K that launched with it is not simply doubled-up 1920x1080, but rather 4096x2304, meaning I'd get effective vertical height of more than 1080. These two factors, combined with the fact that I could also use them with my MBP, have basically sold me on the Ultrafine 4K. I would like this community's help with figuring out the minimum upgrade to drive two of them:

• I understand, from reading posts here on the topic, that the Ultrafine monitors operate over a USB-C alternate mode carrying DisplayPort data.
  
• Most results for ``Ultrafine'' when searching this forum turn up results for the 5K, which mentions being consistently unable to drive it at simultaneous full resolution and 60Hz. Would this also be an issue with dual 4K?
  
• I know I need a beefier GPU. Strictly speaking, I don't care for the ``minimum'' in this department. From initial poking through these forums, I've found that the latest architectures with macOS support from both AMD and NVIDIA should do; is this correct?
• Do I need a new motherboard (therefore new CPU too) that itself has Thunderbolt support to use the Thunderbolt 3 expansion cards from Gigabyte, Asus, et al?
• Will it be possible to daisy-chain the monitors when driving them from my Hackintosh?
• Note: I'm entirely happy to go a generation or a few behind on Intel chipset+CPU if there is a working configuration like that.

Any and all help, answers, known working hardware suggestions, etc, are appreciated. Thank you!

 

[phrozenpenguin]

Did you ever resolve this - I'm trying to work out how to run a single LG Ultrafine 4k (21.5 model).

 

[theruck]

any 4k will run with the onboard iGPU @30Hz over HDMI
any 4k will run with any other GPU @60Hz over DisplayPort or HDMI1.4 (there are some monitors like LG which have problem with the protocol version and is being solved by LG)

so going over DP you can get any 4k monitor running @60Hz without much hassle
making display work over thunderbolt is absolutely different story though. imho not worth the hassle as with PC builds you can just purchase what is already working and not to mess with the LG monitor sold by apple.
currently only AMD GPUs are supported for the newest models. Nvidia cards are supported only the GTX 7XX models and probably will be dropped in the next version of Mac OS.

 

[phrozenpenguin]

Thanks @theruck for the response.

I'm aware I could go the "standard" 4K Displayport route, which as you say should work fine. I might well do this with a (pair) of 24" Dell's.

I can't find any "standard" 4K displays that are < 24" (the Apple one the subject of this thread is 21.5", which is quite a difference in reality). And, I already have the Ultrafine (which I think is an amazing monitor - brighter, higher PPI, full P3 colour gamut etc), as opposed to buying another 4k monitor!

 

[theruck]

4k below 24"makes no sense
if you already own it and want to keep it, you just need a thunderbolt working in your hackintosh. there are plenty of topics with some golden builds so look for the thunderbolt there but you will be limited to the onboard onlu GPU so it makes no sense as well

 

[phrozenpenguin]

4k at 21.5" means I can run 1440p resolution (scaled) and it looks "retina" - and the display is nice and physically compact. Appreciate it won't be for everyone, but it makes sense to me. I have not tried it at 24" to see what it looks like - but the screen will take up more space on my desk.

Since my original post a few days ago I have done a bunch of research and it looks like one is not limited to onboard GPU; there are adaptors and PCI cards which will mux a DP signal into a DP-Alternate signal over USB-C (which is what the LG ultrafine 4k requires). There are differences between Thunderbolt and USB-C despite them sharing the same physical port, so I'm not aware of Thunderbolt limitations.

I agree, overall, the LG Ultrafine (whilst a great monitor) does not make a lot of sense for a hackintosh build - but with some effort it should be usable.

 

[theruck]

you can build the one with thunderbolt card and try it, if not working you can always buy more hardware
i would go for a 28-32"4k today

 

[phrozenpenguin]

i would go for a 28-32"4k today

And what effective resolution would you run that in?

 

[theruck]

4k
now i use 3x fullhd monitors and the ergonomy is just terrible for my neck

 

[phrozenpenguin]

4k
now i use 3x fullhd monitors and the ergonomy is just terrible for my neck

Interesting....maybe I have been missing a trick. I will have to try a larger 4k screen and see what it is like at native 4k.