How to connect Multiple Monitors to a PC

Sometimes you wished you could extend your computer monitor to a second or even more screens so as to have a wider view of your workstation. Or you may even wish to have different monitors display different programs you use at work for easy access. A friend of mine who manages an online store recently confessed to me she wished she had different monitors displaying live chat, email and orders at a time without having to minimize one program to view another.

The need for multiple monitors has extending to different fields and it’s been proven that the use multiple monitors can improve productivity by up to 50%. Even gamers are using multiple monitors these days for a better gaming experience. You only need to play a flight simulation game on multiple monitors to understand what am saying, the experience is awesome.

So for whatever reason you may need to connect multiple monitors to your PC, I am going to teach you here exactly how you can achieve this even without spending a dime hiring tech assists.  So before then let us take a look at what and what we will need to connect multiple monitors to a PC.

Hardware Requirements to Connecting Multiple Monitors:

You will require the following to be able to connect multiple monitors to a PC;

1. Monitors (One or more depending on how many you want to connect)

2. Monitor cables to connect the monitors to the PC (This could be  Digital Visual Interface (DVI) connectors, Video Graphics Array (VGA) connectors, HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) connectors, or S-Video connectors for using your TV as a monitor). The connection must match the monitor cables because the ports connect to the video cards on your computer.

3. In case you do not have the connectors you need for your monitors you may have to install video adapter to change the connection type so that is the reason why its best  you use monitors that will match the video output of your computer.

Note the number of monitors you can connect to a PC depends on its graphics card, while some graphics card supports two or more monitors some may not. Some desktop computers allow you to add an extra graphics card which will in turn allow you to connect up to four monitors to it. AMD’s Eyefinity allows a single graphics card to connect up to six monitors, even some specialty manufacturer Matrox has cards that can support up to eight monitors. SO the number of monitors you can connect is a function of the graphics card in your PC.

For Laptops you may need an external adapter to be able to connect more than two monitors. The adapter will serve as an external graphics processor.

Software Setup:

Connect each monitor with the suitable connection to your PC, like I said earlier every PC has a certain type of connection; ensure whatever connection type you choose matches with the monitors and the PC you are connecting to. Ensure the PC is on and running and once a monitor is connected the PC will automatically detect it and apply the display settings appropriate for the monitor.

Most OS has native management for multiple monitors, which is enough to cover the basics. You can manage the location of each monitor relative to each other, resolution of each monitor screen and orientation. So click Identify to correctly identity locate each monitor, then rearrange the screens in the display settings to match the order of arrangement you want. Ensure correct resolution settings and adjust orientation as you will like.

In case of different graphics card like AMD and nVidia, its best to use the native Windows controls else both AMD and nVidia graphics card have their own monitor management software built into the control panels of their drivers.

Actual Multiple Monitors:

Now to add more features to multiple monitor connections a software called ‘Actual Multiple Monitors’ which promises to fix all the shortcomings of Windows in a multi-display environment is required. With Actual Multiple Monitors you can fully functional taskbar, wallpaper, screensaver, task switcher, desktop management tools and desktop mirroring tools to each display.

Download Actual Multiple Monitors to enhance your user experience whenever you work on a multi-monitor environment. This smart application will make each monitor look and behave like a different computer and this can save you time and resources to achieve more and result in improve productivity.

Must Read: Install more than one OS (MULTI BOOT) on your PC

Now i hope you can be able to follow the guide here to connect multiple monitors to your PC, if you have any suggestions or have any questions to ask please use the comment form below. Remember to subscribe to my RSS feeds.