You'll need either HDMI 1.4 or later, or Displayport. Versions of HDMI prior to 1.4 can't run at 4k resolution. Your video card needs to support HDMI 1.4 or Displayport and you'll need a suitable cable.

For 1920x1080, I'd recommend using a VGA cable, because it provides crystal clear images and 60Hz refresh rates. But, people online having been saying that they have very poor results with VGA, and recommend HDMI. Whenever I've used HDMI, it looks like shit.

So, I would say; don't trust what people are saying online.

It looks like you'll want to go with a Displayport connection, which is a successor to VGA and DVI. It needs to be Displayport 1.2 or above, I'd recommend 1.2 or above.

>>25700
Don't use VGA if you can avoid it, it's analogue and ancient.

>>25701

So is your mum.

So I'll be able just to use a HDMI 1.4 or higher? I would't need a HDMI to DVI adaptor?

>>25700
>60Hz in 2k16

>>25703

DVI won't carry 4k signals.

As long as your video card supports HDMI 1.4 or later and you use a half-decent cable, it'll work. You don't need to spend a fortune on the cable, but the poundshop ones won't work reliably or at all at 4K. Amazon do a quality HDMI cable for a fiver.

I'd also suggest using the shortest cable possible. 4k/60 can get a bit flaky over longer cable runs. The data rate at that resolution is nearly 18 Gbits/s, so you're really pushing the limits of what twisted pair cabling can handle.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B014I8SSD0/

>>25705
>I'd also suggest using the shortest cable possible. 4k/60 can get a bit flaky over longer cable runs.

Bollocks, that's not how digital signals work. So long as you're not using something ridiculous (i.e. 50' or something) without an amplifier you won't notice any difference at all.

>>25706
>Bollocks, that's not how digital signals work.

This is true except for the fact that there are a lot of cables knocking around that aren't up to the standard.

As >>25705 said, a £5 cable can be good enough, just don't buy that 90p ebay special.

>>25707
Aren't up to what standard? I'm not disagreeing that there are probably some terrible 90p ebay specials that might as well be made of tinfoil and duct-tape out there, but you aren't going to notice the difference between a 1 or 2m cable. That's not how digital signals work, there isn't a continuous linear degadation like with analogue signals - either it works, or you start dropping bits and it doesn't.

>>25703
I think >>25699 is being misleading. There's no such thing as an HDMI 1.4 cable, it's just a dumb cable that carries digital signals. Any HDMI cable will work for 4K. What matters is that your video card supports sending HDMI 1.4 signals.

>>25706

>Bollocks, that's not how digital signals work.

There's not really any such thing as a digital signal, just analog signals that happen to carry digital data. High-speed data signals don't look like neat little square waves, they're raggedy things full of jitter and noise. See the diagram on the left? That's what the receiver is trying to decode.

Longer cables inevitably have higher capacitance and greater susceptibility to noise. Every additional foot of cable eats into your error margin and increases your chances of reliability problems. You have less headroom to cope with perfectly common problems that cause signal degradation - dirty connectors, kinked cables, electromagnetic noise and so on.

1080p over HDMI has a reasonable amount of headroom, but 4k (especially 4k/60) is really pushing the physical layer to the absolute limits. Using the shortest possible cable just reduces the chances of frustration.

>>25707
This. As long as the cable is up to spec it'll be fine. It's not like the days of PS/2 where if you stick a 3m extension on the end your mouse lags to fuck.

>>25708

>it's just a dumb cable that carries digital signals

A cable might be a few bits of wire, but it's far from dumb. Everything from wire gauge to the quality of the contacts to the number of twists per inch in the pairs will affect signal integrity. A huge amount of engineering goes into a good cable. Try hooking up a Wifi antenna with a bit of bell wire or running gigabit ethernet over Cat3, see how you get on.

Any cable meeting the HDMI High Speed specification should work at anything from 720p to 4k. In practice, most cheap cables aren't certified and have never been properly tested - the cable manufacturer just cloned someone else's cable and hoped for the best.

>That's not how digital signals work, there isn't a continuous linear degadation like with analogue signals - either it works, or you start dropping bits and it doesn't.

The effects of a bad cable can be quite subtle. Dropped frames and intermittent HDCP errors creep in long before the connection fails completely. The fact that your monitor isn't saying "no signal" doesn't mean that the cable is working properly. There are adequate and inadequate cables, but there are also marginal cables that just about work when everything is going well. You turn on your tumble drier, the EM noise floor goes up by 10dB and suddenly your TV is cutting out.

>>25711
Regardless of the engineering complexity, the point is that a cable has no concept of different versions of HDMI signal.

>>25712

Versions, no. Data rates, yes. I said "suitable cable", i.e. one capable of reliably operating at the necessary data rate. 4k is far more demanding than 1080p and requires a considerably higher quality cable. That doesn't have to be a stupidly expensive cable, but if you try and use some poundshop cheapie with a 4k monitor you're in for a world of pain.

>>25713
So long as it's high speed it'll be fine.