My current laptop is a Thinkpad W540 with Intel i7-4800mq with Nvidia Quatro K2100 (2GB) and Intel HD Graphics 4600 (113MB). Is that powerful enough to run 6 1080p/60hz 27” monitors?
Hi there,
Thank you for contacting Plugable, and welcome to the community!
Your ThinkPad natively supports up to 3 displays. However, from a technological standpoint, with the right combination of hardware, we should be able to get you to 6 monitors. My recommendation would be a “hybrid” setup that uses the laptop’s native power alongside our DisplayLink-powered adapters and docks to reduce the load on the USB bus. Because this is a 4th-generation system, I want to be very realistic about performance expectations.
The following setup can support six displays.
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Use a UD-3900H docking station. This will connect to one of your USB 3.0 ports and drive 2 monitors at 1080p.
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Add a USBC-6950U Dual Display Adapter. You can plug this into the blue USB port on the back of the UD-3900H. This adds another 2 monitors.
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Lastly, use the VGA and Mini DisplayPort directly on your ThinkPad to run the final 2 monitors.
For the native VGA and Mini DisplayPort ports, it is important to note that you will also need to purchase Active adapters if your monitors do not support DisplayPort or VGA. It’s likely your displays have DisplayPort, but the VGA port will require an active converter if your displays do not support VGA inputs.
I do want to be fully transparent: this is an older system, and driving six 1080p displays may be a significant ask for a 13-year-old CPU. You will likely see your i7-4800MQ working quite hard just to manage the desktop windows across all those screens. This setup is strictly for low-intensity productivity (spreadsheets, text documents, static web pages). You will almost certainly experience some lag or choppiness if you try to run full-screen video or complex animations on the monitors connected via the dock/adapter due to the age of the system.
If this is something you want to explore on your end, I’d suggest starting with the docking station first. This will let you see whether the performance meets your expectations with the first couple of displays before you invest in the additional adapters for the full six-screen setup.
I hope this helps. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
Thank you,
Adi
Plugable Technologies
Thank you for the quick response. Let me take this in a different direction. My current laptop will not support Windows 11 so I am done come October either way. I am likely to buy another Lenovo (P16s, Gen 3 or 4 with a dedicated gpu and i7 cpu or Ryzen 7) what would be the minimum gpu requirements to use your UD-7400pd? I would likely have Thunderbolt 4 on the Gen 3 or 4.
It’s my pleasure to help!
That would be a huge upgrade! Transitioning to a Lenovo P16s (Gen 3 or 4) will make a world of difference in performance.
Because the UD-7400PD docking station uses DisplayLink (DL-7400) technology, most of the graphics processing is handled by the chipset inside the dock rather than placing a heavy load on your laptop’s GPU. To answer your question directly: You do not need a powerful dedicated GPU to run this dock. The integrated graphics in a modern i7 or Ryzen 7 are more than sufficient.
If you are still aiming for that 6-monitor setup, this is the perfect dock to build around. You can run 5 monitors directly from the dock and easily add a 6th using the laptop’s own HDMI port or an existing DisplayLink adapter if you have one on hand.
I hope this helps. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
Thank you,
Adi
Plugable Technologies
Very helpful. You gave me something to think about. Thanks again.
Happy to help!