Ultimate Dual Monitor Setup from Scratch in 2024

how you doing today Mark Frank's here guys today I'm going to show you how to set up a dual monitor setup from start to finish so I'm going to wipe out my entire desk in the background and from scratch to finish I'm going to show you how to set up a dual monitor setup on your Mac Mini or set up a dual mining setup on your PC laptop all right so if you're scratching your head if you're a teacher if you work from home or you just don't know how to set up a dual monitor setup well this is going to be the video for you guys cuz I'm going to show you how to do it from the beginning to the end so buckle your seat belts this is the video for you let's go ahead and get [Applause] [Music] started all right guys so I went ahead and stripped my desk clean here so all I have is my 74in desk and I'm going to go over the parts that you need to get a dual monitor set up working for you so the first thing that I want you guys to do I want you guys to go out and buy a monitor now this right here this is a scepter monitor 24in business IPS monitor I bought it originally for $129 but right now is on Amazon for $89 now prices are subject to change but this is a nice monitor it's a 1080p it's not a 4k monitor but most people don't need 4K monitors uh most people are not going to be using 4K monitors uh 1080p resolution works just fine uh very vibrant and very crisp pictures here all right so get you a monitor this is 20 4 in monitor gets you two of these currently right now the price is $89 again so I have two of them here and and behind it it has h two HDMI ports guys and it has a VGA port now I believe the newer ones may have different ones I'll let you guys know the newer ones this is an older model I bought this in 2021 the new new ones may have a instead of a VGA port may have a DVI port so get two of these first next what you're going to need you're going to need a stand all right so I mean it's up to you guys if you want to put U put like a little wooden stand here cuz the monitors do come with their own stand but I would recommend is getting a stand uh what I got is a Vivo stand so this is what it looks like so what it'll do is it'll sit up high so you'll have your monitors up high because if you don't have the stand you could just use a regular monitor stand but your monitors will be like I love when it won't be up higher you have the maybe a wooden an extra wooden stand and I'll put that down also in the description but I I find this works best this is an articulating Vivo stand so you can you can you can have a monitor that's horizontal you can change it make another monitor vertical and it's just moves around uh very easy movement you can design it kind of how you want all right the the articulation on here is actually very very good now I'm not going this is I already put this together now when you get it it'll will come with just one pole this is the top part here guys I'm I'm going to do a quick synopsis it'll come with just one pole and what you do you put this arm here you'll put it over the pole and you have an Aly wrench screw it come with Aly wrench where you can tighten it up so it'll come with one little pole you put this arm over the pole here he has a Al Ranch screw and you can just tighten it up all right you can you can set it what height you want it can go down a little bit further or you can have it up a little higher and you just tighten it that way now on the bottom if you guys can see that have my little Cable Management things falling down on the bottom here you may not be able to see that there's some screws here you'll stick this plate here this little plate that says Vivo you'll screw this in with some Alyan screws that'll come with this stand so actually don't make it difficult it's actually a an easy setup and then lastly this clamp here this is a clamp that clamps into your desk you will attach this clamp to the back of the pole like with these two screws here so this clamp here you attach it to the back I'm sorry you attach it to the front and then you put the screws in the back like here so it's actually very easy to set up and then you have your little Cable Management uh little plastic devices here you put that on here a couple of them fell but it's very easy to set up all right so this is going to be the Vivo stand I bought this for like $30 and I believe it's still $30 is 28 $28 to $30 on Amazon and I'll leave the link down below all right so that's what we need here all right so next you want to go ahead and get a USBC to dual HDMI adapter so it's a USBC at the tip to a dual HDMI adapter so this USBC will plug into your laptop and you'll have two HDMI ports where you can plug your monitors in so you want to make sure you get this I'll put this in the link down below now if your computer doesn't have this let's say you have a an older laptop let's say you have older laptop that doesn't have a USB C port or it doesn't or it doesn't have a lightning Port it just has a usba A or USB 3.0 Port then you're going to need a USB 3.0 to dual HDMI adapter here so it's a USB 3.0 and this should work on a USB 2.0 or usba a as well but for an older Legacy laptop you use a USB 3.0 at the tip here you see the little blue trim to a dual HDMI adapter here all right so you'll need you'll need at least one of these two here and then what you'll need guys and this is the last thing that you'll need you need to get some HDMI cords here so initially you just need two HDMI cords but I'll just say get a third HDMI cord just in case but you just need two HDMI cords just go to your first monitor to that uh to that dual adapter and your second monitor to the Dual adapter and just to be on the safe side just get you an extra HDMI cord these don't have to be like 6 feet or or they can be uh uh a little bit smaller they can be 2 to four feet in length but you just need three I mean sorry you just need two HDMI cors and just a third one for extra and that's pretty much that's pretty much what you need to kind of get it started so let me go ahead and show you how to set it up all right so now that I have everything that I need here one of the first things I want to do is I want to attach the these brackets to the back of the monitor so what I'll do here is I'll grab the Monitor and your monitor should have these holes here for to wall mount it but we're not going to wall mount it we're going to we're going to put it on this stand here and you you attach the bracket like this so this part right here will be sticking out and you'll place it here and you you you have screws that you'll you'll just tight you'll just screw it in now you don't need to use your screwdriver you can just use your hands and I'll show you here momentarily and you just place right here and you screw each one of them in and then what you'll do is once your stand is on the desk you'll just place this on your stand just like that and it'll just sit on your stand it's not complicated it's actually very simple so let's go ahead and do that so what I'm going to do here I have I have three I have four screws here I'm going to go and attach this right here and I'm going to hold it I'm just going to do it for you guys you guys can have it laying down and you can just go ahead and screw it in but just to show you guys I'm just going to have it like this and here's your screw now it does have an imprint for a screwdriver if you want to use a screwdriver I just I don't recommend it just use your hands and I'm going to line it up and I'm just going to screw it in here now it'll probably be a little bit easier if it's just laying down you can lay your monitor down lay it on a couch or a bed or something with some cloth it'll be easier so I just screw that in there I'll screw it a little bit tighter you don't really need a screwdriver there you have it all right so I'll go ahead and screw the rest of them in [Music] here and if you have a different monitor it does have different holes here guys it has different hose where you can put a smaller monitor in these stands right here can fit up to two 30in monitors and they can each be about 22 lb this is a 24in monitor so it'll fit it'll fit just right on his stand but it can fit up to 32 30in monitors so I got this done let's go ahead and do the next one here pretty [Applause] [Music] quickly remember this is how it's going to go [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so now that the monitors are done guys we're going to go ahead and put this stand on my desk here so basically what what it'll do is I'll I'll bring it down it'll go in between my desk my desk is like this it'll go in between then I'll tighten it up very simple if I do it on this side it'll just go just like this and then it would tighten it up so I'm going to do it from behind just remember just to keep it simple I'm going loosen it down I'm going take it down you go to the left and it'll loosen it down and I'm going I'm going to bring my desk out right here and I'm going to put it behind my desk so I'm going to put it behind like this and that's how it should fit all right so I'll slide my desk back and and then what I'll do is I'll go ahead and screw the rest in so I'm going get on my desk what I'll do is I'll hold it and when you want to make sure it's centered make sure it's centered looks like it's centered looks like we're good to go make sure good here yeah and then I'll what I'll do is and if you need some help you can get somebody else to help you but I'll hold it and then I'll go ahead and tighten it okay what you do is you go you go [Music] right all right all right so there we have it I screwed it in and now it's tight it's not going anywhere I can move the arms it's good so let's go ahead and put the monitors on go straighten it out here so I can put the monitors on so this is sturdy guys and that's the way you want it if it's not sturdy just make sure to tighten it underneath all right so now that I have the monitors the brackets on the Monitor and you have this little bracket right here this little metal part it'll with the hole it'll sit on top it'll sit on top of your Vivo stand this screw right here so we're do is I'm going to go ahead and it's very easy don't make it difficult has some Impressions that it slides down there as well you just slide it on here so I'll go ahead and slide it on here and then the screw will go through the hole and then I can flip it like that and then it has these two nuts and what you're do is you'll just screw it on the nuts if you guys can see it like this once you put that monitor on you'll just screw this on top of it so once that monitor goes down here you'll just put this on top and then you just screw it like that and you're good to go so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put the so since I put the monitor here on this one I'm going to go and screw this one here and that's it I'll move that monitor back for this one same thing go ahead it'll sit on it'll sit on this screw part right here and it'll go through it'll go these brackets right here will go on top of this part and it'll slide right down so I'm going to do that right did that slid right down take this nut here and I'm going to screw it on and that's it now I do see that it is moved a little bit that's why I don't have it as tight on here thought it was stirred I just have to make sure that's a little bit tighter underneath but it's it's for the most part it's pretty good guys don't make it difficult uh the more complex you make it the harder it is it's very easy just throw that down on there and now you have two monitors here it looks good so what you can do is guys with here you have horizontal if I wanted to I can make this one vert vertical I can move it around a little bit put it in front put this one in front as well good tic good articulation move it up a little bit move it down and what you can do is if it's too loose guys if it's too loose there's a spot in the back here right here you can take an alley Ranch and just tighten it so everything can be tightened you just take an Aly Ranch and tighten it from here you can take an Aly Ranch and tighten this part right here on the handlebar but but then you can move it how you see fit you can push it back and move it make sure you just have some leeway in the back of your desk it can't be all up against your wall if it's if it's far up against your wall then it'll then it won't be able to curve so you want to leave some space maybe like uh 3 or 4 in from your wall so you can put it together but it can it can articulate pretty well you can I'm trying to put it together like this and put this so I can put them together be almost like an m in the back and you can finagle that a little bit and you can put them together it's actually you can do it like that now it's not perfect I'm just kind of showing you guys really quickly here how you can how you can articulate these monitors all right so this is how you set this portion up let's go ahead and finish setting everything up so the first device I want to use to go and hook these dual monitors up is is going to be my Mac Mini and then I'll use my Windows computer my Windows laptop which most you guys are probably using but if you have a MacBook Air you can't set up dual monitors without some some software but if you have a MacBook Pro then you should be able to set up dual monitors no problem all right so this is what we're going to use guys and you have two USBC ports or Thunderbolt ports so I'm going to use is I'm going to use my USBC to dual HDMI adapter now with a Mac Mini the dual HDMI adapter is not going to work as far as putting both HDMI cords into each one of these devices so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put this here and for this Mac Mini I'll put one HDMI cord into this HDMI adapter here and the other HDMI will go into this HTMI input that's on the device itself all right so that's the difference between between the Mac Mini now typically you can just get an USBC to a single HDMI adapter and that'll work as well but if you have a dual a dual HDMI adapter laying around it'll still work so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to go ahead and plug I'm get an HDMI cord and I going go and plug into one in just Pressly the first one all right so that's how it should go into one end if you have a Mac Mini now this end is going to go into the back of my monitor so I'm going to go and put it into the back of the monitor so go here and find the HDMI port in the back of your monitor see it here you can put in HDMI port one and that portion is done that portion is done so I have it in the the first in the first uh USBC port or lightning bolt port and that's done now for the second monitor for the second monitor for the Mac Mini I'm going to go and put it where it says HDMI so open port is an open port for HDM I'm go and put it in here all right so that Port is done all right so I'm going to go ahead and put it in the back of my monitor I'll put it in HDMI 1 all right all right so again quick synopsis The First first one with the USBC adapter it goes into the thunderboard port and then the second HDMI well that this thunderboard ports this HDMI feeds into your first Monitor and the second monitor will go straight into the HDMI port and that feeds into the second Monitor and that is how you do a physical dual monitor connection with your Mac uh with your Mac minia device so let's go ahead and do one with your Windows device and then let's go ahead and set up your extended monitors I'll show you guys how to do that uh when you turn a computer on let's go ahead and do it all right so for a Windows computer the physical setup process is going to be even easier so guys basically what we're going to do is we're going to use the USBC adapter we're going to plug it in here now if you're if you're and this I have a Surface Pro 7 plus this is it's just like a typical laptop Windows PC laptop guys if your USBC if you bought an adapter and it doesn't work if this doesn't work then you just might have an older adapter or just not compatible then you just use this USB port here here you can use USB 3.0 usually it's the blue tip here this is a USB 3.0 to dual HDM HDMI adapter all right so what we're going to do guys is we're going to plug it in here and with the PC you can use both of these so you can use both of these for a dual monitor setup so I'm going to go ahead and put my first HDMI cable in here and this should work this should work on most uh Windows new windows PCS so I'll put the first one in here and I'll go ahead and put my second HDMI cord in here so it'll look just like this and it's generally going to be Plug and Play So when you have your system on you have your your monitors on you just plug this in and it'll it'll recognize it but when it recognize it guys It'll recognize it and most likely your screams will be duplicate and you'll need to change that to an extended cuz most people are looking for an extended monitor setup all right so then looking on one monitor they can have an app and they can move it to move it to a different monitor all right so let's go ahead and plug this into the monitor here so I'mma like this I'm going set it up here let me go ahe and put on this kickstand and now I'm going to go ahead and plug it up go ahead and do that plug it into HDMI 1 just like that and then I'm going to go ahead and plug this one in HTMI one on the second monitor just like this here make sure that snug in there and then there you have it and what it'll do here once everything is on it'll automatically detect the two monitors and then you'll have a dual monitor setup you just have to go ahead and go into the settings and make sure it's extended instead of duplicate all right guys so I went ahead and added everything back I put my speakers back my microphone decorations uh power adapter mouse keyboard I added everything back and I have my Mac Mini set up with dual monitor setup as you can see these are dual monitors it's an extended monitor go ahead and open this and it's just extended now when if you first plug in the the Dual adapter dual HTMI adapter it may be a duplicate screen now this is what a duplicate screen looks like basically what I'll do is I'll go to the Apple I'll go to system settings and then I go down to where it says it'll say displays and then it says use as right now is it says extended display so it says use as right now it says extended display now if I had if I put mirror for scepter f24 mirror now they're both duplicate as you can see both of my uh my monitors here are duplicate all right and you may have this right when you hook up your USBC to the Dual HTMI adapter you you your most a lot of Windows computers that'll have that once you plug it in it'll be a duplicate so all you do is you just go to use as and go here again and hit you hit stop mirroring usually when you hit stop mirroring it'll Auto automatically put it in an extended display so now what you can do is you can have a display between these two here now if you have these bars right here let's say this bar right here you want it on this screen or or you wanted this screen right here to be the main screen and that screen extend it all you have to do is go to AR range and then you'll be able to either you'll see the bar strip right here you caning bring the bar to the second Monitor and it'll switch it for you so this now is going to be the main Monitor and this is going to be the extended monitor so let me do that again I'm going to switch it back here I'm going to go ahead and put this there a little bar you'll see and I'll put that bar hold on here let me put it I'll put that bar on this one here you see it here I'll move that bar over I moved it over now you see it on the other screen all right so again if you want to switch the bars or switch screens you just go to a range and switch it you can you can uh switch your whole laptop I'm sorry you can switch your whole monitor if I bring it like this I hold it and I bring it like that bring it over here now this monitor switched let's say if I put my monitor one I put my monitor one on the right side I put my monitor to on this side and it just doesn't look right you can always go to a range and switch your monitors all right so right now I can't go dual monitor here because it I have to go always to the left and it's then it goes on the extended monitor so if you if you have it like that if it's not where you your mouse can't go back and forth to both monitors you have to go way to the left way to the right then you you need you just need to rearrange your monitors you go back to arrange and bring this monitor over bring this monitor over to this side over here and bring that down hold on now I can go between each one of you can see that Mouse I can go between I can bring my window between each monitor instead of going all the way to the left and it it'll go on this side here all right so that's how you do an extended uh monitor on your Mac Mini pretty much in a nutshell remember guys all you have to do right when you plug that uh USB to HDMI adapter in and you have your HDMI cord pluged into the outlet in the back of your Mac Mini you just go to the Apple here you go to system settings and you go all all the way down to where it says displays displays here and then where it says use as make sure it's extended display it may say mirror if it's mirroring that means both of them look the same then you just go to use as and you'll click on your monitors it say stop mirroring when you hit the stop mirroring uh button it'll automatically go into an extended display then you can take your windows and put in an extended you can bring your bring your windows to different monitors so it looks like that so let's go ahead and move on to the Windows PC all right so I have my USBC to dual HTMI adapter plug to my Windows laptop now this is my Surface Pro 7 plus and this is probably what most you guys will have you guys most of you guys will have a Windows laptop so I have it plugged in and I have my Windows laptop and I have the dual monitors up above and both of these monitors are duplicate as you can see same thing here they're they're duplicate so let me go ahead and show you guys how to extend the monitors and I'm going to show you also how to close your lid cuz a lot of people when they extend their monitors when they have one main Monitor and one extended they also want to close the LI lid of their of their laptop so I'm going to show you how to do that so the first thing we want to do is I'm going go to my main screen down here all right so now I want to go ahead and right click on my main screen I'm going to go and go down to where it says display settings all right so I'm going goe and bring this down because it's up above all right so display settings right now we see my main Monitor and I see monitors two and three they're together indicating that it's duplicate so it it says it as well it says duplicate duplicate desktop on 2 and three so what I want to do is I want to extend that instead of duplicate it so I'm going go and click on two and three I'm going to go down to the drop- down box here where it says duplicate desktop on 2 and three I'm going click it now next I'm going to go to it says extend desktop on 2 and three so I'm going to click that and I'm going to hit keep changes and now my desktop is extending it on on uh two and three so now this window can go on all three different monitors and when I say all three different monitors I mean the two two monitors up here and my laptop so it's all extended I can put multiple windows on different uh different screens so this is primarily what everybody's looking for I can leave one right here hold on let's I can open up something else let's open up a different windows and hit this plus arrow let's just say I want to do Yahoo and I can just bring that over to this screen so I have this screen and then I have my laptop down below so it's just all different screens if you guys can see that I know the lights may be a little bit bright but it is different screens on every monitor all right so this is what most people are looking for so this is a dual monitor setup so again to make that happen cuz when you plug this adapter in it may you may have duplicate monitors up up above so again to make that happen all you're doing is right clicking let me go ahead and and minimize everything all you're doing is right clicking on your desktop and going to where it says display settings and it's going to identify your displays and then you're going to go to the display that you want to extend no and remember three and two were together so we clicked on three and two and I I hit this drop down box and I hit extend all right so now to close the lid because after you extend extend your monitors most people they're going to want to close their lid and put their laptop aside so this is what you're going to do uh while you're in settings and remember I clicked on I right clicked in my on my desktop anywhere on my desktop and I went to display settings while you're in display settings you go to where it says find a setting we go to search it says find a setting right here and what I'm going do is I'm going to go ahead and type in lid so I'm going type in l i and I'm going to hit enter it says change what what Clos in the lid does so I'm going go and click on it and you see where it says when I close the lid right now it's set to sleep when it's on battery and it set to sleep when it's plugged in so what you going want to do is you want to hit this drop down box and go to where it says do nothing when when I close my lid when it's on battery do nothing and when I close my lid when it's on B when it's plugged in do nothing and I'm going go ahead and hit save changes so when I close this lid now it's not going to do anything it's not going to sleep it's not going to turn anything off so I'm going go and close this lid I close right now and voila so it now this this became one Monitor and this this is extended now guys remember when I did this

Channel: Mark Franks Tech Reviews

Views: 11,557

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Id: XOmCjx_FY5M

Length: 29min 11sec (1751 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 18 2023