Dual screen with new Mac Mini
So I've begun the long-awaiting switch from PC to Mac in the office and picked up a new Mac Mini yesterday.
We currently use dual screen on all machines in the office.
I'm wanting to hook these up to the mac mini and use dual screen.
The mac mini has thunderbolt and hdmi output.
I've done some research and what it looks like I would need is a:-
DisplayPort Thunderbolt to HDMI / DVI / VGA Adaptor (like the one pictured below):-
Yet, as I was about to purchase one of these adaptors, I noticed that the description said that only one of these outputs can be used at once (so I wouldn't be able to have one monitor plugged into the DVI and the other plugged into the VGA as per the above photo).
Is this right? If so, what is the recommended setup to have a working dual screen setup with the mac mini? Would I need to get two of these adaptors and plug one each into the two Thunderbolt ports that my mac mini has? Seems a bit overkill if you can't utilise more than one port on an adaptor at once.
Your advice or recommendations greatly appreciated.
You connect two monitors to a Mac Mini via two separate ports; one monitor for one port.
It sounds like with both your monitors you'd like to connect via VGA. So then you'd need:
- Thunderbolt Mini display port to VGA adapter.
- HDMI to VGA adapter.
The general answer is your Mac Mini 2014 has two Thunderbolt 2 ports so your best bet is to drive one monitor from HDMI and the other from Thunderbolt so that you have another Thunderbolt port free for storage or networking.
Out of the box, fully supported by Apple is either two displays via Thunderbolt (and they can chain if one of the display is actually Thunderbolt and not DP or another adapter) or one display via Thunderbolt and the other via HDMI.
See http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5219#18
MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012), and Mac Mini (Late 2012 and later) computers can use an HDMI-compatible device on it's HDMI port while using one Thunderbolt display, or they can use two Thunderbolt displays.
If you can't or don't want to use Thunderbolt or HDMI, you could avail yourself of USB adapters. The part you listed looks like it will connect to a Thunderbolt port and end that chain and be seen by OS X as one display no matter which of the older ports you connect to one (or more) displays.