27-inch iMac as Gaming PC Monitor?

[DoctorDragonmaw]

I am the (proud?) recipient of a Dell XPS 710 gaming PC from a very kind, upgrade-happy family member.

I am also the very proud owner of a late-December 27-inch i7 iMac, on which I have been happily enjoying Bootcamp'ed Lord of the Rings Online, Fallen Earth and Crysis.

Has anyone been successful in running a desktop PC through their iMac?

I can upgrade the video card in the PC and, with the 8GB of ram he has installed and the metric a$$-ton of games, enjoy the beast for a while.

It would be seriously awesome to be able to switch back and forth between the two, I am just checking with you guys before I commit to the upgrades and adapters.

 

[mulo]

acording to this you can only use MDP to MDP
http://www.cultofmac.com/using-imac-as-monitor-requires-very-specific-cable/20176

 

[Hellhammer]

IIRC you need either ATI 5970 or NVidia GPU with (Mini) DisplayPort. Other ATIs won't work, I think. Or if you get a card with DVI or other inputs, then you need this

 

[JLB-UK]

acording to this you can only use MDP to MDP
http://www.cultofmac.com/using-imac-as-monitor-requires-very-specific-cable/20176

I found this

http://www.atlona.com/Atlona-DVI-to-Mini-DisplayPort-Converter-p-17859.html

Converts you PC DVI to MDP, then you would need a MDP to MDP cable

Should work I guess! No promises though!

Edit: Use the link provided by Hellhammer for maximum resolution

 

[Hellhammer]

Edit: The link posted above is for dual monitors, the link I provide is single monitor only

It's not single or dual monitor. The adapter you linked can only do 1280x720 i.e. 720p. iMac's screen is 2560x1440 so you would be missing a lot. The adapter I linked supports 2560x1440 i.e. the native resolution of the iMac. Of course you need a GPU with dual-link DVI too (most of them have)

 

[JLB-UK]

It's not single or dual monitor. The adapter you linked can only do 1280x720 i.e. 720p. iMac's screen is 2560x1440 so you would be missing a lot. The adapter I linked supports 2560x1440 i.e. the native resolution of the iMac. Of course you need a GPU with dual-link DVI too (most of them have)

Yes you are correct! I read it wrong! Guess thats what happens when you read quickly at work!

Thanks for the correction

 

[staralfur]

O.P.

Did you get this working? I want to do this exact same thing and would love to know if the advice here helped you.

 

[hedgehogmac]

I am the (proud?) recipient of a Dell XPS 710 gaming PC from a very kind, upgrade-happy family member.

I am also the very proud owner of a late-December 27-inch i7 iMac, on which I have been happily enjoying Bootcamp'ed Lord of the Rings Online, Fallen Earth and Crysis.

Has anyone been successful in running a desktop PC through their iMac?

I can upgrade the video card in the PC and, with the 8GB of ram he has installed and the metric a$$-ton of games, enjoy the beast for a while.

It would be seriously awesome to be able to switch back and forth between the two, I am just checking with you guys before I commit to the upgrades and adapters.

FYI, I have a 27-inch iMac i5 and did the following: 1. have iMac running as normal 2. start up PC (I have a Zotac GTX460 with displayport - $220) 3. plug displayport to mini displayport cable into Zotac displayport and then into iMac mini displayport 4. see PC on iMac automatically at 2560x1440!!!!

I have the following PC rig: Phenom II x4 965BE CPU, Corsair H50 liquid CPU cooling, 4 x 2GB G.Skill Ripjaws RAM, Zotac GTX 460 1GB GPU, Asus M4A88td-v Evo USB3 m/board, Corsair TX850 PSU, Xonar DS 7.1 soundcard, Win7 64bit..

..and games look AWESOME with iMac as display. For example, Crysis Warhead was at native iMac res and was butter smooth at high settings as was Far Cry 2. The Zotac GTX 460 really is superb - its power surprised me. All so easy with Zotac displayport. Just need to get displayport to mini displayport cable from ebay or where ever (abt $10).