Be Excellent To Each Other

There are LOADS of sub-£500 UHD monitors. Seriously, more than half a dozen, at street prices.

There's a viewsonic for £379.99 RRP but that's because they know they fucked up releasing late and 30hz.

And a 4k g-sync for under £500 street, albeit 60hz. I don't think 120/144hz sacreens cost that much know, but I'm not interested because they're 1440p max.

The rest, sure, but things re changing - the lovely dell for under £500 versus the £1200 RRP in april is spectacular!

Custom PC did an extensive round-up on the new wave of 4K monitors this month, the Viewsonic in particular got an absolute mauling (30hz, really?), your starter for a decent one was £500, which is amazing considering they were £3000 a year ago but still not what was being asked about in this thread IMO.

(Plus of course, to make use of a 4K monitor, especially in games, you need a £2000 PC to pump that many pixels out.)

120/144hz screens come down to the same basic issue, you need a beefy PC to kick that many frames out per second, and you have to be a niche twitch FPS gamer to want it in the first place.

G-sync is still new and largely unproven, I wouldn't advise anyone to shell out on one of those until the technology beds in and is widely supported.

I love my PC wankathons more than most here, and even I'm not thinking about jumping on the 4K train until Intel get their next-gen CPU architecture out and Nvidia's 800 series is (a) Launched and (b) Not demanding crazy prices.

Of the 28inchers, only an asus is over £500 now. It's mental. They're all based on a single manufacturer's panel - they must be shitting themselves with laughter.

I'm not arguing about gaming requirements or anything*, just your assertion that nothing has changed. There's a mauling going on.

* I've said before I'm purely interested in desktop estate and a cheap, single slot, low profile, low.power card to drive it.

Having had a look around my usual haunts (Overclockers, Ebuyer, Dabs) I'm not seeing any decent 28 inchers for much under £500, although there are a fair few around that price. (Custom PC identified a good one at £460 IIRC, but said you'd be better off spending an extra £40 on one that came in at £500, can't remember the make and models.)

For me a 28 incher is the bare minimum size that would be usable at 4K, anything smaller than that and you're just into tiny-o-vision territory. (TBH I'd like to go 4K at 30 inches, I'm currently on a 27 inch 2560x1440 screen and that feels about right for pixel density.)

For what you want 4K for then yes you could get away with a modest graphics card, but for anyone wanting to play games pimped out (and for anyone who's gone 4K and plays games, that's a fair assumption), the single GPU card to drive those games scarcely exists, a 780Ti will sort of do it but you're talking £450 for the card alone. Add on the cost of the screen and that's a grand just for the graphics card and the screen!

Undeniably things are changing fast in the world of 4K, but I still maintain that's totally not what was being asked about here, hence me saying 'not much has changed since April' But yes, I realise that's splitting hairs a bit

Just to back you up a bit here (not that you need it or anything) I agree in that I was asking about a small-ish monitor with no fancy shit going on (certainly no 4K madness!) and you answered that question as described, for which I thank you. I'm very interested in that whole chat about new monitor tech and have read with interest everything you and Bik have said in the last few posts but, yeah, none of that is currently anywhere near my price range or even what I'm after. I'm grateful to both you a Bik for all the info though so cheers to all!

I am so fucking tempted to get that dell, even though I know it's suddenly gone 'cheap' because it's due a.refresh to current hdmi/displayport standards that make 4k properly workable (just like the 31" that is also nearly half price less than a year after launch, a mate paid £1900+vat as a Christmas present to himself, best street price from.scan) - even dell's website is punting it at £555 inc vat and delivery now. That's a better than 50% discount six months after launch.