USB to HDMI Adapter or Card for Two Monitors and a TV Aspire TC39-UR11

thebreeze

I am trying to get acquainted with how to move around on this forum. I may have originally posted this in the wrong thread. If so please remove it from the (Monitors thread) or from this thread. Thanks.

I recently purchased an Aspire TC39-UR11, AMD Ryzen 3 4300G Quad-Core Processor, AMD Radeon Graphics, 8GB DDR4, 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD. It comes with only one HDMI port. I would like to add two more. I have looked at the USB to HDMI adapters but I am also interested in mounting an HDMI card that has two HDMI ports available in one of the expansion slots . The PC is for general use. I have two monitors and a TV I want to connect to the unit.  Any suggestions?  Which would be better an adapter or card?  Any suggestions on a decent card or adapter?  Thank you for your time.

(Thread was edited to add model name to the title)

billsey

I believe I gave most of this answer in your other thread, but you are asking some subtly different questions here. Your Aspire TC-391 supports a single HDMI port off the motherboard (and possibly a VGA port as well, depending on how they populated the MB). If you plug a GPU into the PCIe x16 slot then the HDMI (and VGA) on the motherboard is disabled and the GPU is what handles all video. If you use your machine for even fairly low level gaming then the direction you want to go is a GPU card with enough HDMI or DP ports to handle the three monitors. If your uses are more into static displays, so web browsing plus productivity software, you will find putting a USB dock with two or three video ports will be more cost effective. I don't believe your model has a USB-C port or Thunderbolt port, so you don't need to fall into the trap of finding a dock that requires DP Alt Mode in order to do graphics.

For a GPU, the NVIDIA 10xx and 16xx models should have all the horsepower you need, but watch the power budget so you don't need to swap to a bigger PSU as part of the upgrade. For a dock just pick one with enough ports and a big enough brand name to continue to provide driver updates as needed...

billsey

I believe I gave most of this answer in your other thread, but you are asking some subtly different questions here. Your Aspire TC-391 supports a single HDMI port off the motherboard (and possibly a VGA port as well, depending on how they populated the MB). If you plug a GPU into the PCIe x16 slot then the HDMI (and VGA) on the motherboard is disabled and the GPU is what handles all video. If you use your machine for even fairly low level gaming then the direction you want to go is a GPU card with enough HDMI or DP ports to handle the three monitors. If your uses are more into static displays, so web browsing plus productivity software, you will find putting a USB dock with two or three video ports will be more cost effective. I don't believe your model has a USB-C port or Thunderbolt port, so you don't need to fall into the trap of finding a dock that requires DP Alt Mode in order to do graphics.

For a GPU, the NVIDIA 10xx and 16xx models should have all the horsepower you need, but watch the power budget so you don't need to swap to a bigger PSU as part of the upgrade. For a dock just pick one with enough ports and a big enough brand name to continue to provide driver updates as needed...

thebreeze

Thank you kindly for your prompt response. It was exactly what I needed and gives me a direction to move in. Thanks again.

billsey

et us know how it works out.