Did yall know about the display port pin 20 thing?
Posted by ej1oo1@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 14 comments
I built my dream computer last year and have loved it every day. I'm not a huge gamer but I wanted something beefy to last a good while. Got an rtx 3070 and a i7-12700k. Picked up an affordable 1440p monitor as part of the set up because I could run games at that res now if I wanted. The new monitor had display port and hdmi but my old, now second, monitor was hdmi only. With my 3070 only having 1 hdmi out I grabbed an Amazon basics display port cable to be connect to the new display.
Everything worked great. No build problems. I have been living the dream. But one quirk has been the monitor back light would turn on and off repeatedly when the pc was off or sleeping. This led to me just turning the monitor off when I was done for months. Today I decided to get to the bottom of this weirdness and after changing 1000 different power and monitor settings to no avail I found a thread saying it could be displayport pin #20 transmitting power. Apparently displayport has 20 pins but for most if not all cases the 20th pin should be left unconnected or else power can be transmitted when it should not be. This is sometimes not disconnected or wired wrong in cheap cables. Why the hell is this even a thing!? It sounded so dumb but I replaced my display port cable and it was indeed the problem. The monitor behaves now and life is good again. I figured I'd share my story if any of you are also wondering why your monitor does that weird thing.
Cheers fellow nerds
Edit: The cable that worked for those asking
Edit edit: also I lived in Texas for 6 years please excuse the unironic yall
Long-Patient604@reddit
It's weird to see people trying to save 10 or 15 dollars after spending 1000's for the overall build
deleted_by_reddit@reddit
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Interesting_Mud8816@reddit
Point me in the direction of a good display cable. I cant sift through the garbage. I am on hour 6 of trying to narrow it down.
Chevelle_Chris@reddit
This, I just fried my 3070Ti because of this - at least I think this is the culprit. Trying to find a better cable's been... entertaining.
deleted_by_reddit@reddit
[removed]
skylinestar1986@reddit
There are many pricey high wattage USB-C cables that are limited to USB2.0 speed. Read wisely.
killchain@reddit
Pretty scumbag marketing if you ask me, especially since in many cases that would be used for laptop charging and video out (which requires both the power delivery and the data bandwidth).
ChrisFoxie@reddit
It's also the USB Foundation not necessarily having the clearest standards.
PD (power delivery) 3.0 is completely different to USB 3.0, which refers to comms speed.
I am not surprised when someone ends up with a cable that does half what they intended to use it for, because one of the two protocols is abiding to an older standard.
lordmogul@reddit
I'm still confused and annoyed about all the USB sub standards.
ChrisFoxie@reddit
Everyone is.
They're trying to fix things with USB Type-C taking over all of the different connector configs, and supposedly USB4 will be properly unifying (although won't be common for quite some time).
But as it stands now... it's confusing to both consumers and developers, just have a look at how long USB standards/specs documents are.
Let's see, I'm hopeful that with legislation slowly moving towards common standards (like EU forcing consumer electrics to use USB C instead of any other USB connector), we may have simpler choices.
tortilla_mia@reddit
There's no good way to unify everything.
Either you end up with a standard cable/connector that does everything and it's super expensive.
Or you end up with a "standard" that has optional parts and consumers need to be highly aware of which parts their gadgets have implemented and what the requirements are for them to work together.
romanovfortress@reddit
benq's cheap, faulty DP cable included with my monitor killed my gpu- gtx 1070 that i just spent $250 on.
too bad i couldn't prove it was their cable that was made wrong, and they owe me a gpu.
AttemptEquivalent186@reddit
Well in my case my notebook wasn't booting at all. Power and battery LEDs on but stuck there. Forced it multiple times and only when I disconnected my display port display it happened to boot without issues... Found a reddit that told how to put a piece of tape in that contact and voila everything working as should now. Crazy. At least I haven't had to buy multiple things before knowing this.