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M2 Mac Mini - 2 Studio Displays

K

kitkat99333

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 21, 2013
27
16
Can anyone confirm if the standard m2 can
Support 2 studio displays?

There’s information all over the place giving different answers.

Also would a single tb4 dock support 2 studio displays like it does for other macs?
 
kitkat99333 said:
It says two displays but maybe it’s me being stupid but it doesn’t make it clear to me saying it supports 2 x 5k.
Click to expand...
Simultaneously supports up to two displays:
One display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one display with up to 5K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt or 4K resolution at 60Hz over HDMI
 
For people wanting to connect more than 1 USB-C or DisplayPort or Thunderbolt display, the Mac mini M2 Pro is best. For the M2 Pro, a Thunderbolt dock can allow connecting two displays to a single Thunderbolt port.

If you want to connect a second display to a Mac mini M2 (not Pro), then it needs to be connected to the HDMI port. Maybe you can use something like the Club-3d CAC-1336 to connect the Studio Display to the HDMI port. However, HDMI 2.0 max pixel clock is much lower than DisplayPort with DSC. Therefore, you'll need to use 4K60 or create a custom timing 5K39. I believe SwitchResX 14.3 (beta?) recently added support for creating custom timings for Apple Silicon Macs (I guess it's using the same custom EDID feature that BetterDisplay found). I don't know if the Apple Studio Display will work at 5K39 from the HDMI port using a CAC-1336.

UPDATE: See #7 for corrections.
 
Last edited:
joevt said:
If you want to connect a second display to a Mac mini M2 (not Pro), then it needs to be connected to the HDMI port.
Click to expand...
This is contrary to what Apple's tech specs say for the M2. Post #4 in this thread is a direct copy/paste from Apple. The M2 mini does not require the use of the HDMI port for one of the 2 displays, but you are using all the Thunderbolt/USB-C ports if you're driving 2 Studio Displays with the M2 mini.
A more detailed document is here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213501
From that page, for the M2 non Pro mini:

Supports two external displays in any one of these configurations:
One display up to 6K at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, and one display up to 5K at 60Hz over Thunderbolt
One display up to 6K at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, and one display up to 4K at 60Hz over HDMI
 
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chrfr said:
This is contrary to what Apple's tech specs say for the M2. Post #4 in this thread is a direct copy/paste from Apple. The M2 mini does not require the use of the HDMI port for one of the 2 displays, but you are using all the Thunderbolt/USB-C ports if you're driving 2 Studio Displays with the M2 mini.
A more detailed document is here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213501
From that page, for the M2 non Pro mini:

Supports two external displays in any one of these configurations:
One display up to 6K at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, and one display up to 5K at 60Hz over Thunderbolt
One display up to 6K at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, and one display up to 4K at 60Hz over HDMI
Click to expand...
Sorry about that. I should have double checked. M2 Mac mini, whether it's Pro or not, can connect two displays to Thunderbolt. It's only M1 Mac mini that can only connect one display to Thunderbolt.

The difference between M1 Mac mini and M2 Mac mini is that M1 Mac mini calls its ports Thunderbolt / USB4. M2 Mac mini calls them Thunderbolt 4. Thunderbolt 4 guarantees the ability to connect two displays to a single Thunderbolt port.

For M2 Mac mini, you should be able to connect two Apple Studio Displays to a single Thunderbolt port using a Thunderbolt 4 hub. This will leave one Thunderbolt 4 port for other devices. A Thunderbolt 4 hub has three downstream Thunderbolt 4 ports so that will also have a Thunderbolt 4 port remaining for other devices. Two Apple Studio Displays will use about 23 Gbps of transmit data, leaving 17 Gbps of transmit bandwidth for other devices. Receive bandwidth is mostly unaffected by DisplayPort traffic.
 
joevt said:
For M2 Mac mini, you should be able to connect two Apple Studio Displays to a single Thunderbolt port using a Thunderbolt 4 hub.
Click to expand...
I'm not certain this will work but I haven't seen any mention of multiple display support on the M2 mini from any of the dock manufacturers, and I have no M2 mini and no Studio Displays to confirm one way or the other.
 
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