3 ms·

Heya, I’m the guy who put this together. Let me know if you have any questions about it! I’ve had the setup for about a month now and absolutely love it.

DoingIsLearning 6y ago
Great work! Can you link to the supplier of the driver board? How did you go about determining the board was ok to plug into a shinny new panel? My previous experiences with Aliexpress where a bit hit and miss. Either with issues of using obvious counterfeit parts or batch quality issues (order 100 and 70 are OK, etc.).
- phillipcaudell 6y ago
  The supplier was great! I think I received it within a week of ordering (which considering I'm in the UK and it was coming from mainland China is pretty impressive). Here's a link to the exact part and supplier I used: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001192011831.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.7cf34c4dqyIg1w https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001192011831.html?spm=a2g0s...
  - iams 6y ago
    would you be able to link to the panel you bought off ebay?
vldx 6y ago
Great work! How is the panel? Do you have any uniformity issues? In total, I've tried 7 units of LG 5K UltraFine (27MD5KA-B and 27MD5KL-B). All had [1] uneven brightness (visible on white background) and backlight bleed. Some of the units also exhibited tinting and/or faint vertical lines. I couldn't swallow these issues for the price that I've paid. Now I'm with Dell U2720Q, but I miss the high PPI of the 5K. [1] https://imgur.com/a/oVN3kTc#FGOzspK https://imgur.com/a/oVN3kTc#FGOzspK
- pier25 6y ago
  Jesus that's terrible. I'd expect that from a cheap monitor but not from a $1,500 monitor.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lathiat 6y ago
The genius part about this is your two "monitors" look the same. This is literally a significant part of why I've never purchased an iMac. Now you've given me an idea... Frustratingly this was a native iMac feature "Target Display Mode" in 2009-2014 but they dropped it from the 5K model: https://applerepairstation.co.uk/Technical%20Desk/use-your-imac-as-a-display-with-target-display-mode/ https://applerepairstation.co.uk/Technical%20Desk/use-your-i...
- pram 6y ago
  Target Display kind of sucked in that you needed a fully functional installation of MacOS running the entire time too. It’s nice that the feature was there of course, but I never found it pleasant to use.
  - lathiat 6y ago
    Oh that’s silly. Would have been nice to be firmware level.
    - zeusk 6y ago
      You're describing the Cinema display
      - lathiat 6y ago
        The problem is the Cinema Display doesn’t look identical to the iMac. I like have monitor symmetry, but there was (maybe until the M1’s mini) a gulf in hardware between the iMacs and Minis. Especially the pros.
SloopJon 6y ago
Does your display have glass in front of the panel? For some reason I find myself touching the glass surface of the 5K iMac a lot, which I probably shouldn't do to a bare panel.

DoingIsLearning 6y ago

Great work! Can you link to the supplier of the driver board? How did you go about determining the board was ok to plug into a shinny new panel? My previous experiences with Aliexpress where a bit hit and miss. Either with issues of using obvious counterfeit parts or batch quality issues (order 100 and 70 are OK, etc.).

phillipcaudell 6y ago
The supplier was great! I think I received it within a week of ordering (which considering I'm in the UK and it was coming from mainland China is pretty impressive). Here's a link to the exact part and supplier I used: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001192011831.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.7cf34c4dqyIg1w https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001192011831.html?spm=a2g0s...
- iams 6y ago
  would you be able to link to the panel you bought off ebay?

vldx 6y ago

Great work! How is the panel? Do you have any uniformity issues? In total, I've tried 7 units of LG 5K UltraFine (27MD5KA-B and 27MD5KL-B). All had [1] uneven brightness (visible on white background) and backlight bleed. Some of the units also exhibited tinting and/or faint vertical lines. I couldn't swallow these issues for the price that I've paid. Now I'm with Dell U2720Q, but I miss the high PPI of the 5K. [1] https://imgur.com/a/oVN3kTc#FGOzspK https://imgur.com/a/oVN3kTc#FGOzspK

pier25 6y ago
Jesus that's terrible. I'd expect that from a cheap monitor but not from a $1,500 monitor.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

lathiat 6y ago

The genius part about this is your two "monitors" look the same. This is literally a significant part of why I've never purchased an iMac. Now you've given me an idea... Frustratingly this was a native iMac feature "Target Display Mode" in 2009-2014 but they dropped it from the 5K model: https://applerepairstation.co.uk/Technical%20Desk/use-your-imac-as-a-display-with-target-display-mode/ https://applerepairstation.co.uk/Technical%20Desk/use-your-i...

pram 6y ago
Target Display kind of sucked in that you needed a fully functional installation of MacOS running the entire time too. It’s nice that the feature was there of course, but I never found it pleasant to use.
- lathiat 6y ago
  Oh that’s silly. Would have been nice to be firmware level.
  - zeusk 6y ago
    You're describing the Cinema display
    - lathiat 6y ago
      The problem is the Cinema Display doesn’t look identical to the iMac. I like have monitor symmetry, but there was (maybe until the M1’s mini) a gulf in hardware between the iMacs and Minis. Especially the pros.

SloopJon 6y ago

Does your display have glass in front of the panel? For some reason I find myself touching the glass surface of the 5K iMac a lot, which I probably shouldn't do to a bare panel.