These dummy plugs are a bit of a niche product – but if you fall into that niche, they’re good at what they do! Basically, these are an HDMI male plug with a chip attached that has a lot of EDID entries – it makes the computer think that there’s a monitor attached that supports a variety of resolutions when there’s in fact not.
So why would you want to do this? The most common reason is because some PCs and some graphics solutions (GPUs or integrated graphics) will not work without a monitor of some sort plugged in – but if you’re using the device in a headless fashion (accessing it via Remote Desktop over a network or using it as a sever…or using it to mine cryptocurrency) you might want the graphics chip to be active even though you don’t have a monitor plugged in. So you plug in one of these dummy plugs and the computer thinks there’s a monitor and powers up the graphics chip- bingo! Similarly, even when you do have a monitor attached, you might want to use multiple graphics chips and need a monitor plugged into each one – another use for these dummy plugs.
As far as dummy plugs go, these are good ones. They support HDMI 2.0 / 4K60Hz resolutions, seem to be well made, have an attractive gold finish and are a very good price for three. And they work well – just plug and go. So if you need a solution like this, you need look no farther!
Report