MacBook – Four Apple Monitors on a Macbook Pro

cinema-displaydisplaymacbook prothunderboltthunderbolt-display

I have a 15" Mid-2014 Retina MacBook Pro and would like to hook additional monitors to it. Ideally, these would be 4x 27" Apple Displays of some sort.

I have done a bit of Googling, but information on this sort of configuration seems to be a bit sparse. Here's what I know:

  1. This model can officially support 2x Thunderbolt Displays.
  2. Thunderbolt displays can be daisy-chained.
  3. Apple LED Cinema Displays (Mini DisplayPort model) can be daisy-chained off of Thunderbolt displays, but only if there are 1 or more thunderbolt devices separating them, and them
  4. USB to (mini) DisplayPort adapters (external video cards) exist, but can only output at 720p to an iMac or Cinema Display.
  5. USB to Thunderbolt adapters do not exist at this point. (And probably never will)
  6. It is easy to go from (mini) DisplayPort to HDMI, but not the other way.

Based on the above, I have come up with several options in decreasing order of preference. (Ranging from simple/elegant to hackish) I'd like to know if anyone has tried any of these, and what kind of success you have had, or if you've done something different that I haven't thought of.

One last thing. When these monitors are plugged in, the computer will be in clamshell mode in a Henge vertical dock, so it won't need to power the internal display.

Option 1:
4 Thunderbolt displays. Two plugged into the thunderbolt ports, one daisy-chained off of each of those.

I understand that this probably won't work, but am wondering if anyone has tried it.

Option 2:
Two Thunderbolt Displays, each with an LED Cinema Display hooked up to it with, something in between (ie. a docking station)

I understand that this configuration will work if I hook up 1 pair, but need to know if the computer can handle 2.

Option 3:
Some way of getting a DisplayPort signal from a USB video card, Two thunderbolt displays, and two DisplayPort displays.

I haven't been able to find anything here, but if anyone knows about anything, I would really appreciate it.

Best Answer

DisplayLink produces some chipsets that allow to convert HDMI / DVI video stream to USB. Plugable and Anker sell them (around 50-60 USD for one converter). It works for Windows and sometime on Mac (check the product's description). There is some experimental support for Linux. On Mac OS X you can plug up to 4 monitors this way.

Otherwise you can give a shot to Kanex Thunderbolt to eSATA + USB 3.0 Adapter (I haven't tried it).

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