Late 2012 Mac Mini 1440p possible?

[Stavros75]

I will try this tomorrow with a friend of mine. Unfortunately this Mac has to operate on high sierra. It's the maximum I can get so I can connect to the servers at my work and also work with Adobe cs6. Old servers I guess and old programmes that they won't upgrade. So I must have the same equipment. That's what I've been told. Can't I get 2K with high sierra? Is there a bug or a bottleneck?

Guys to help someone with the same problem. I went nuts over this all night, I couldn't figure out what was the problem. The only thing I didn't check was the power cable. Well, I thought let's give it a try, changed the power cable, boom I have signal from the Mac mini. 2K resolution all good.
Thank you for your time to address my problem. 👍 I hope I helped someone here.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

Doubt I’ll get any replies to this necro thread but here goes.

I have two Late 2012 Mac minis; one is connected to an LG 34” 5K2K monitor via a slightly convoluted path:

Mac mini (TB1 output) -> StarTech TB2 dock (TB2 input) -> DisplayPort output -> LG (DisplayPort input)

The only workable resolution I get is 1920x1080. (There is one slightly higher that works, but the difference is so little - 2048x1152 - it’s not worth using. Plus, it’s @30 Hz which is a no-go for me.)

SwitchResX and BetterDisplay give me a couple of higher choices but neither work. In particular, neither one offers the Mac mini’s max output resolution of 2560x1600. 😞

I’m assuming that the LG is “too new” and doesn’t support that resolution. (Even if it did, a 16:10 resolution on a 21:9 monitor would probably look wonky.)

Starting to think I should get an older Dell 30” monitor that does 2560x1600 natively in hopes that this setup would work with that resolution using DisplayPort (or DVI, via the official Apple miniDP-to-Dual-DVI adapter).

 

[PaulD-UK]

@Riot Nrrrd I've used a Dell U3014E 30" monitor very successfully with a 2012 15" MBP, using the 'official Apple miniDP-to-Dual-DVI adapter.'
It also worked with the adapter daisy-chained out of a Caldigit TS2 TB2 dock.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

@PaulD-UK That’s two good data points to have! Cheers. I’ve been looking at U3014T’s and UP3017’s on eBay.

I also have a 2010 cMP cheese grater with a 30” Apple Cinema HD Display that’s just lost its video 😞 so I’m researching kill-two-birds-with-one-stone solutions. I’d love to switch from using DVI to one of the mini DisplayPorts on my ATI RADEON HD 7950 Sapphire Mac edition in the cMP, but I fear I won’t get a boot screen on that port like I do with the DVI. (Well, before the ACD died, that is.) I’m wondering if either the U3014T or the UP3017 can auto-sense DP 1.1 vs. DP 1.2 …

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

@PaulD-UK Forgot to ask - if you were using the DVI adapter with the U3014E, did you have anything else plugged into the other inputs on that monitor? (DisplayPort in, mini DisplayPort in, HDMI in)

 

[PaulD-UK]

The Dell U3014E has an OSD option to select either DP 1.1 or 1.2, presumably to restrict it to 1.1 if needed. I don't know if it can auto-select. I think the E suffix is just for UK/EU models, but everything is similar to other models.

I've used the Dell with both DP 1.2 and HDMI plugged into it from the same Mac, and that worked fine, as I could select which one I wanted to use.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

@PaulD-UK Good to know. My 34” LG 5K2K can do DP 1.1/1.2/1.4 via OSD but it doesn’t autosense.

From what I understand, when you boot a cMP5,1 it can only do DP 1.1 at boot time. After the OS is up (Mojave) it can talk DP 1.2, but that just seems like a pain to deal with. So I haven’t tried hooking it up to my LG.

I also just realized that if you booted the cMP with DP 1.1 and then set the monitor to DP 1.2, if the cMP were to crash (panic, whatever) or lose power and restart, it wouldn’t boot because the monitor had changed to DP 1.2. So without the monitor autosensing the DP setting this seems like it’s not a very good idea.

 

[Wahlstrm]

Starting to think I should get an older Dell 30” monitor that does 2560x1600 natively in hopes that this setup would work with that resolution using DisplayPort (or DVI, via the official Apple miniDP-to-Dual-DVI adapter).

I’ve used the Dell u3011 @ 2560x1600 (using a Mini DisplayPort to “normal” DisplayPort cable) with my 2012 mini for many years.

From what I remember, if you want to use any ”newer” resolutions on modern displays the total number of pixels/s just needs to stay below 60x2560x1600.
(About 245Mpix per second).

..Given you can find a way to force a custom resolution and hz.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

I’ve used the Dell U3011 @ 2560x1600 (using a mini DisplayPort to “normal” DisplayPort cable) with my 2012 Mac mini for many years.

Excellent, another good data point to know. I’m having a hard time finding anyone who can/will repair my apparently-busted 30” Apple Cinema HD Display so going the Dell route is looking better and better.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

Geez, I totally forgot about this thread. D'oh.

Well, I have an update. OCLP came out with a 2.3.0 (then 2.3.1 and 2.3.2) update.

I thought I'd update, especially when I went to the root patches and they said there was a graphics patch. But I ran into a problem: the Mac mini had downloaded a version of Sequoia as a pre-stage upgrade, and OCLP refused to patch the system. I did some Google searching and eventually found a way to get past that and apply the 2.3.2 root patches ...

Rebooted and ... a whole new vista of display options appeared! Suddenly I had resolutions of

3840x2160 @30 Hz (NTSC) [Big black bars on either side of the screen]
3440x1440 @50 Hz (PAL) [Fills the entire 34" screen]
2560x1600 @30 Hz (NTSC) [Big black bars]
1920x1080 @30 Hz (NTSC) HiDPI

that are now working which were not working previously, along with a whole raft of others that are less common. (See attached screenshot.)

So I'm happy for now (on 3440x1440 @50 Hz atm) but it's not ideal - I wish all of the above were @60 Hz - but it's a helluva lot better than I had before (i.e., only 1920x1080 @60 Hz (NTSC))!

I guess I'm still a little confused, Everymac says the max resolution of 2nd display support on a 2012 Mac mini is 2560x1600 - I tacitly assumed that was @60 Hz, but it doesn't actually state that.

I've read other posts/threads where I think it was @Amethyst1 who mentioned needing a "pixel clock patch") in order to unlock higher resolutions/clock rates. But I don't know anything about that. (Maybe something like this? Seems a bit scary to try.)