Attaching external monitor to laptop?

Tech Talk Hardware
1

Hi all
Do you know
How much would attaching external monitor to a laptop affect the performance and pressure and life span of laptop?

Is it different on the size /resolution/ refresh rate of the monitor?
Ex:
70”tv
4k monitor
Regular?

Thanks

2

My laptops are HD (1920x1080), so via HDMI, it all works.

When I connect my Chromebox desktop to the tv, the resolutions are not the same. So, the resolution is higher on the tv

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3

I think if the monitor is a higher res than the LT you’ll have some adjusting to do if you use the LT screen at the same time.

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4

Implicit in this question is that you’re turning the laptop into a desktop computer? (i.e. docking it and not really using the built in display at all?)

In any case, the display needs to be driven by a GPU. The laptop may have a CPU with built in GPU or it may be gaming laptop with it’s own separate mobile GPU. Depending on how you drive the GPU (gaming versus light desktop usage) will depend on how hard it has to work and how much heat it develops.

In the end, heat is what is going to kill your device. It needs good cooling design to dissipate any heat. If heat dissipation works well, then I doubt it makes any significant difference which way you use the laptop.

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5

It should not have any effect at all, I know someone who has had an external monitor on a laptop for 5 years now…

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6

Thanks for reply

Yeah it is somehow stupid question but I’m just asking if plugging a monitor or tv or docking puts more pressure
( as a funny example like if you have a battery and plug a tiny led vs a bigger light bulb)

Im asking id a big tv puts more pressure on the device or external port would put my nvidia gpu on more stress
Or if it depends on the resulution only
Like my laptop is 4k and my tv is 1080 so any difference in playing games or photoshop in using any of those

7

My HP Spectre was docked for a long time to a 34" Dell ultra-wide monitor. My work laptop is docked to 2 24" monitors. It doesn’t really affect performance, although I don’t play games on my laptop. As to longevity, it shouldn’t make any difference. The processor and, the usually built-in, graphic chip are designed to cope with multiple displays.

I do do a lot with virtual machines and photo cataloguing, and for that the HP was underspecified, so I ended up with a Ryzen 7 desktop PC.

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8

I run a Dell Latitude E4310 connected to an external monitor. Close to 7 years now with no issue

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9

Thats right my work dell i7 12 thread with quadro Nvidia is docked to 2 27” with a double port thunderbolt (usb c) and it has external power and module
And the fan ON is 90% of the time
But i have systems hungry softwares

I don’t think docking is that much different from attaching to the hdmi port

10

should be no issue for the laptop. The resolution should not have any effect as long as it is an extension of the laptop monitor not duplicating the laptop monitor. I do not think it matters if attaching to a HDMI port, display port, or VGA port.

Randy

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11

I’ll just chime in my experience. I have attached single and dual monitors to laptops for a long time. No long term issues. No performance degradation.

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