m15 R2, External Monitor Setup Help Requested

Question

Hi,

A few days ago bought myself an Alienware M15 R2 with the RTX2070 MQ.

It comes with a Thunderbolt 3 Port, mini Display Port v1.4 and an HDMI 2.0b

I wanted to connect an external monitor LG27GL850-B and use that as my Primary and Only Display using either the HDMI or the mini Display Port and hopefully get 120ish Hz Refresh Rate at 2K.

I'd like to request a step by step way of doing this keeping in mind that ive never done this before. How to tweak the settings in my laptop etc.

Any help in the matter would be great. Pls advise. Thank you.

@jphughan

sprinteroz · Accepted Answer

Windows External Display Settings

Setting up the external display on Windows is simple. Connect the external monitor to the VGA or HDMI port on your laptop and power on the monitor.

Right-click an empty area of the Windows desktop and select Screen Resolution. Alternatively, type screen resolution while viewing the Start screen, click Settings and select Adjust Screen Resolution.

Click the Multiple Displays drop-down menu and select Extend These Displays. You cannot select a primary display when cloning your screen or showing a single monitor.

Click the external monitor from the top picture. If you have trouble identifying the monitor, click Identify to see a number on both screens. The number displayed on your monitor corresponds to the number on the graphic.

Check Make This My Main Display and click Apply. Click OK to save all of the changes close the window. Test out the system to ensure your settings are correct. The external monitor should function as the primary display but you can still drag items between the laptop and external monitor.

*YouTube video: https://youtu.be/eiR2Z2s2QrQ

jphughan · Accepted Answer

@SSM76  Use the Mini-DisplayPort output by getting a Mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable and call it a day.  The MiniDP output should be wired to the NVIDIA GPU, which means you'd be able to use G-Sync, and it would have enough bandwidth for 2560x1440 120 Hz.  (Fyi, don't use the term '2K', because it's a huge misnomer and is therefore apt to cause confusion.  2K is a film resolution of 2048x1080, and therefore in the consumer space it actually refers to the nearest and slightly LOWER resolution of 1920x1080 -- just like 4K is a film resolution of 4096x2160 and in the consumer space refers to 3840x2160.  The 2560x1440 resolution you're dealing with is rightfully called QHD or 1440p.  The former is only one extra character to type, but it adds a lot of disambiguation value. )

A51-06 · Answer

Now I just rethought my entire Resolution knowledge after I heard that. Thanks @jphughan!

A51-06 · Answer

It's not even your fault. Even I was confused about the 2k resolution because I thought it was 2160 x 1440p which people said was 2k. I thought 4k was 3840 x 2160 but it was revealed that it wasnt.

SSM76 · Answer

@jphughan Thank you for your timely response. It did help me clear up the doubts i had. And yes...ure right..using 2K is misleading and i will bear that in mind in the future. Thank you for correcting me which i hope will prevent me from making a fool of myself

jphughan · Answer

Happy to help, and no worries @SSM76 and @Alienware Area-51 ALX 2006 . Unfortunately 2K has become rather widely used to refer to QHD/1440p. I guess it's because we already had FHD/1080p, and people just figured that "2560" starts with a 2, so they'd call it "2K". (Although they seem not to be bothered by the fact that the resolution they call "4K" starts with a 3....) The reason the actual 2K resolution (2048x1080) is called 2K is because 2K refers to the horizontal resolution, i.e. (very nearly) 2000 horizontal pixels. Same goes for proper 4K which is 4096 horizontal pixels. I suppose calling QHD "2.5K" might have made sense, but I haven't seen anybody use that.

In any case, the fact that an incorrect use has caught on doesn't make it any more accurate, and definitely means it isn't a good idea to use. As a similar example of a confusing case where the difference matters, lots of people think that "biweekly" means "twice per week", when it actually means (or used to mean) "every 2 weeks". (The term for "twice per week" is, or was, "semiweekly".) This confusion was so widespread that it was a bit hazardous to even use that term, since if you suggested that a meeting be scheduled to occur biweekly, confusion about how often you wanted to meet was practically guaranteed. But apparently the misconception about what biweekly means has become SO widespread that nowadays some dictionaries actually list both of those intervals as valid definitions -- which of course renders the term utterly useless.

SSM76 · Answer

@sprinteroz Thank u to you too for a step by step explanation. It was very helpful. Thank you.

A51-06 · Answer

Thank you!

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m15 R2, External Monitor Setup Help Requested

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