Another desktop replacement success story

[MKairys]

I have two Dell monitors, 1600X1200, keyboard, mouse, microphone, two printers, scanner, external HD, etc. My goal was to replace the Dell full-tower system driving it all with a Surface Pro 3. And here it is



Note the portrait configuration of the monitors: this was the hardest thing to get right:



I've used about everything the docking station has:



Note the StarTech DVI adapters. I initially tried to cheap out with a pair of $10 cables with the right connectors, but I got weird results. The monitor connected to the docking station display port would show "static", vertical wavy red lines, but only when there was a window being displayed. I attribute this to the "active adapter" vs. passive connector issue.

Anyway it works great, faster and smoother than my old AMD Athlon!

 

[strollin]

Nice setup! Really shows what the SP3 can do when coupled with the dock.

 

[SleepingWeasle]

Great setup, thanks for sharing! Does it seem to be taxing on the Surface to run all the monitors at once? I'm planning on doing something similar, but with a single 4k monitor split into 4 virtual 1920 x 1080 monitors using UltraMon. Obviously I can't try this out in the store, but your configuration is pretty close to what I want to try.

Do you think I should get the I7 model for the improved graphics? I know it will probably depend on what I'm running, so:
Office
Siena
PhotoShop
Rhino (Cad modeling)
Covers about 90% of what I do. I'd also like to try out 3D scanning with it, using Reconstruct me or Artec Studio.

Thanks!

 

[MKairys]

Does it seem to be taxing on the Surface to run all the monitors at once?

I'd have to say no, because I don't ever hear the fan kick in. (The only time recently I heard the fan was during an image backup.) I should point out though that I'm not doing a lot of local computation; most of my windows are browsers or editors or remote desktops...

Do you think I should get the I7 model for the improved graphics?

Yes, I would think so, and the CPU power for your modeling and scanning. Note there have been a couple of threads about the i7 Surface "throttling" the CPU under load (for reasons of cooling, mostly), in which some people have suggested it may not be the best machine for very compute-intensive tasks. (Of course others disagree and say it's fine for them - as in all things, YMMV

 

[MKairys]

Nice setup! Really shows what the SP3 can do when coupled with the dock.

Yes, it worked out as well or better than I expected. It's a home office as you can see, and my tower needed three fans to keep it cool in the summer; it sounded like a vacuum cleaner. I shut it down every evening and it took a good 15-20 minutes to get everything back up in the morning. Then there was its 550W power supply, not to mention a 900W battery backup.

Now my office is blissfully quiet and cool, my desktop is always available, and I estimate I'm saving 4-5 kWh a day.

 

[3D_Guy]

I also love my dock, but I'm having problems with the microphone. I have external speakers plugged into the dock port and they work fine. But the mic is not working. I checked and the dock microphone is correctly set at the default. Ideas?

 

[Racheya]

Glad to see a dock success story, mine is going fairly well so far. Not quite as nice of a setup but it works. Got USB Headphones & keyboard and mouse plugged into the back along with the monitor obviously. I've been quite disappointed with the temperature of it - simply having it in the dock pushes it to 50-60c idling and doing anything much always makes it 70-80. The gaming ability is a bit disappointing too. Tried Borderlands 2 for the first time on it the other day, i7 version, and it's woefully laggy and I have to use the lowest of the low settings to get it remotely working. Borderlands 2 is a fairly taxing game to be fair though.

 

[Bill Mitchell]

Doesn't the steep angle of the dock bother you? I could not use it like that.

 

[MKairys]

Not really. I find it fine for viewing or touching or mousing. It doesn't work well with the pen but I don't use that much while it's docked...

 

[Bill Mitchell]

Not really. I find it fine for viewing or touching or mousing. It doesn't work well with the pen but I don't use that much while it's docked...

I'm quite tall and part of my issue. I find I'm looking down at the SP3 which annoys me. I like looking straight on.

 

[MKairys]

Well, there isn't actually a dock microphone, just the one in the Surface... I also have external speakers from the dock and the mic works for me... I've even begun using it with Speech, and it seems to work quite well.

So do you see this?