Laptop as 3rd monitor

xtalstoran · 10 Mar 2024 at 14:27

Asking for help in trying to setup a laptop as a third monitor for my son. He has decided he is ready to start streaming his games, but he wants to use a laptop to do this rather than use his PC so as not to affect his gameplay on the PC. I have connected the laptop with a HDMI to Display port cable, this is how we connected his second monitor. Unfortunately it is not picking it up. Does anyone have suggestions or has come across this problem and worked out how to fix it? Secondly, will the laptop purely work as a third monitor ie attached to the PC, or will it run off its own hardware. I am concerned it will just run from the PC anyway. Also any advice on a streaming card that might help instead? Many thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

5abr3 · 10 Mar 2024 at 14:47

You would normally need to use something like Miracast to use the laptop as a virtual monitor for the desktop as far as I have ever seen.

andy o · 10 Mar 2024 at 18:12

Does he really mean as a third monitor? Or does he mean stream from the laptop what he's playing on the pc? Not sure how you'd do that but seems like it might not necessarily involve rendering the game on the laptop.

jabski · 10 Mar 2024 at 18:17

I think you would need an external capture card plugged into the laptop and then the pc plugged into the capture card

xtalstoran · 10 Mar 2024 at 19:20

andy o said:
Does he really mean as a third monitor? Or does he mean stream from the laptop what he's playing on the pc? Not sure how you'd do that but seems like it might not necessarily involve rendering the game on the laptop.

Thank you for replying. Yes, he means streaming on the laptop what he is playing on the PC without it affecting his gameplay which he says it will if he streams from his PC. FPS and all that malarky. I have looked at the streaming boxes, but if they plug into the PC then they will use the CPU power on the PC affecting gameplay. If he plugs it into the laptop which is connected to the PC, the PC doesn't seem to be seeing the laptop so not sure that will work either. So unsure how to move forward with it.

PaulM · 10 Mar 2024 at 19:46

Even if you could get the laptop set up as a 3rd monitor (most laptops only support video output not input) it still wouldn't be using the laptop hardware, it would be purely a monitor.

What is your son's PC spec? If he has a recent NVIDIA card (i.e. 2000 series or higher) I would try just streaming from the PC to begin with. Newer GPUs have dedicated encoder chips, if you use OBS and set the video encoder to NVIDIA NVEnc and disable Psycho Visual Tuning (I believe there is also an AMD equivalent if you have an AMD GPU) the dedicated encoder chip handles the encoding, the only CPU/GPU load is scene composition which doesn't use much.

Removed User 345456 · 10 Mar 2024 at 20:14

PaulM said:
Even if you could get the laptop set up as a 3rd monitor (most laptops only support video output not input) it still wouldn't be using the laptop hardware, it would be purely a monitor.

What is your son's PC spec? If he has a recent NVIDIA card (i.e. 2000 series or higher) I would try just streaming from the PC to begin with. Newer GPUs have dedicated encoder chips, if you use OBS and set the video encoder to NVIDIA NVEnc and disable Psycho Visual Tuning (I believe there is also an AMD equivalent if you have an AMD GPU) the dedicated encoder chip handles the encoding, the only CPU/GPU load is scene composition which doesn't use much.

This!

I've never done it, but I've seen/heard nothing but good things about NVenc.

jabski · 11 Mar 2024 at 14:09

xtalstoran said:
Thank you for replying. Yes, he means streaming on the laptop what he is playing on the PC without it affecting his gameplay which he says it will if he streams from his PC. FPS and all that malarky. I have looked at the streaming boxes, but if they plug into the PC then they will use the CPU power on the PC affecting gameplay. If he plugs it into the laptop which is connected to the PC, the PC doesn't seem to be seeing the laptop so not sure that will work either. So unsure how to move forward with it.

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Something like this would be plugged into the laptop via usb and then the cable from the pc's gpu would plug into the capture card. Then a cable from the capture card to the monitor.

Threepwood · 11 Mar 2024 at 15:10

xtalstoran said:
Asking for help in trying to setup a laptop as a third monitor for my son. He has decided he is ready to start streaming his games, but he wants to use a laptop to do this rather than use his PC so as not to affect his gameplay on the PC. I have connected the laptop with a HDMI to Display port cable, this is how we connected his second monitor. Unfortunately it is not picking it up. Does anyone have suggestions or has come across this problem and worked out how to fix it? Secondly, will the laptop purely work as a third monitor ie attached to the PC, or will it run off its own hardware. I am concerned it will just run from the PC anyway. Also any advice on a streaming card that might help instead? Many thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

Does your son have much personality yet, how old is he?, it might be better to shatter his illusions now, rather than letting him learn the cold truth over time, that's my advice
failing that, as soon as you get his set up working, come back and quote me with a link to his channel, i'll give him a follow on my twitch

Craig_d1 · 12 Mar 2024 at 15:21

I'm not a streamer, but had same issue last week. I had problem where my TV wasn't picking up my pc. Have a usb to hdmi dongle for my laptop which i can plug hdmi in that will display my laptop on the tv as a monitor(just like from gpu on main pc).
thought it would work the other way so put hdmi lead from pc into it but get nothing on the laptop.
Bought a capture card dongle for £20. Looks the same as the other really, just smaller so allows signal to be brought into the laptop, and it does 1080p60 or 2k30. Beieve you can then download some software which will then use laptop to stream the incoming vid...the ugreen one is the capture card. both have hdmi socket at end..bigger is output to allow you to use tv as monitor

quickest way of checking you're getting the feed from the pc, is on the laptop, open your camera app(comes with windows)..if your laptop had a webcam it'll show you but top right of the image will be an icon..click that and you can then select the input feed, and you should see your pc output. Just checked on lapto about the streaming etc, and I downloaded a free software called OBS (another way of seeing the incoming feed)...from that software, in the bottom right section there's a bit for setting up streaming
if you google ugreen vid capture card, you can pick it up for £16.99 ..OBS software is free...worth a try to start with before splurging on more expensive stuff