I own an older monitor that has only has VGA and DVI port and I want to connect it to my deck for daily use.

In theory this should be as simple as getting a DVI to HDMI converter cable and then connect to a dock that has a HDMI port, right? Or perhaps a DVI to display port adapter instead? I’ve read about people having trouble with DVI monitors so I checked multiple dock vendors and their statements boil down to “we don’t support it”, ie they don’t deny or rule out that it works but don’t want to give guarantee either.

Is anyone in a similar situation and can recommend a dock? I want to resolve the monitor situation first and then worry about additional stuff like USB ports, etc.

My monitor is a Samsung SMT 2333T (https://www.samsung.com/us/business/support/owners/product/2333t-series-2333t/)

Edit: I got it working and it was quite simple, here’s my steps:

  1. I checked the port at the back of my monitor (reference chart) which turned out to be DVI-I dual link.
  2. then I purchased a HDMI <–> DVI adapter cable which supports my monitor’s resolution (1080 p). This costs around 10 €.
  3. connected that cable to the official Steam Deck dock and my monitor and it works without any further setup
  4. while in the Deck’s Desktop mode you can go into the system settings --> display and make your external monitor the primary display. Primary means that your start bar is located there, new apps will launch on this screen by default, etc. In the same settings menu you can also turn off the Decks own display while the external one is connected. I do this because I can’t comfortably look at it anyway while it’s in the dock and also to save energy.
  • Max-P
    14•8 months ago

    Simple passive HDMI to DVI-D single link should work for this monitor.

    HDMI 1.0 and DVI-D Single Link are electrically identical, so they just work.

    It starts getting messy when literally everything else. HDMI to DVI-I (analog) is a no go without an active adapter, because HDMI simply doesn’t have analog signals so it’s got to be converted. Similarly, 1440p over DVI requires DVI-D Dual-Link which is also a no go without an active adapter.

    My experience with my expensive DP to DVI-D DL has been poor and full of desyncs. DisplayPort is a packet-based protocol and apparently my Vega 64 has its timings just ever so slightly off and I get rolling black lines and artifacts. Fine on NVIDIA though, but my 1060 had native DVI so useless. I would avoid going through DP if you’re going to DVI.

    Another thing with DisplayPort to HDMI: passive cables rely entirely on the source to be smart and be able to switch the wire protocol to HDMI. Not all devices and GPUs support that.

    But, for your use case a simple passive HDMI to DVI-D SL should work fine.