Four screens on an HP Pavilion 550-153no

[RenniePet]

I've just bought an HP Pavilion 550-153no, and I want to connect four screens to it. (No requirement for heavy graphics usage, just business apps.)

Can I remove the provided AMD Radeon R5 330 and install a cheap graphics card that can drive two screens? I.e., will the on-board AMD Radeon R7 continue to work and be able to drive two screens, despite the removal of the AMD Radeon R5 330 and despite it sensing that there is another graphics card installed?

Or do I have to install a graphics card that can drive four screens? I'm thinking of the AMD FirePro W4100. It's power requirement is "less than 50 W", just like the AMD Radeon R5 330, so that should be possible without having to upgrade the power supply?

[Malygris1 · Accepted solution]

Hey there @RenniePet,

Welcome to the HP Support Forums! It is a great place to find the help you need, from other users, HP experts and other support personnel. I understand that you would like to connect 4 displays to your computer and I am happy to assist you with this.

Looking at the HP Pavilion 550-153no Desktop PC Product Specifications, under the section on integrated graphics, it states "Integrated graphics does not work if a graphics card is installed".

So no, the integrated graphics will not work with another graphics card installed. So if you are trying to use four displays, you would need to put in a graphics card that provides for that. The board only has the following expansion slots available:

One PCI Express x16 (Gen 3.0)

One PCI Express x1 (Gen 2.0)

Half-length mini card with WLAN header

Whatever card you decide on, just be aware that the power supply may also need to be upgraded. The system comes with - •180 W uATX Energy Star 6.0 internal power supply, which will likely be an issue for many graphics cards.

I hope that helps, and if it does resolve your issue, please mark this post as a solution. Kudos would also be appreciated.

[RenniePet]

Finally getting back to this. Thanks for your info, which is apparently correct - when I plugged the new graphics card in the on-chip one stopped working, and I could not find any option in the UEFI to change that behavior.

I did go for an AMD (actually Sapphire) FirePro W4100 card and a set of four mini-DisplayPort to HDMI cables, two active and two passive, as recommended on several forums. And it seems to be working fine.

One thing I'll mention which just might help someone else: I spent a long time trying to determine how the DisplayPort connectors are numbered, i.e., which port is number 1 and which one is number 4. It doesn't say this anywhere. I had assumed that I needed to know this so I could put the passive connectors on ports 1 and 2 and the active connectors on ports 3 and 4.

But finally I just hooked things up, and it worked. Then, out of curiosity, I changed the connections. And it still just worked.

So apparently the card can detect whether there is an active or passive adapter on each port, and configure itself accordingly.