Adventures in getting an Dell 30″ U3011 monitor working with an Intel NUC613SYH on Linux Mint

I inherited a beautiful Dell 30″ U3011 monitor but much was my disappointment when I noticed that the maximum resolution on my Linux Mint was only 1920 x 1200 (16:10). After googling I came to the firm conclusion this monitor can do at least 2560×1600.

Around another hour of googling I ran into quite a lot of contradictory information, for example, that Intel chipsets needs to use the displayport adaptor to achieve that resolution. The actual breakthrough was finding many references to xrandr and then a Stack post which clearly explained how to use it. The challenge is finding (or even understanding) the correct parameters to use with xrandr. It seems this utility needs a lot of input and finding the correct parameters were really tricky.

But here is the reference that worked:

1. You need to determine which port is in use to properly set up xrandr. This can be achieved by running xrandr on it’s own and looking for the connected verbs. For example, on my Intel NUC dual screen setup, I have:
   • HDMI-1 connected primary…
   • …
   • DP-1 disconnected…
   • HDMI-2 connected…
   • …
2. The Dell was connected to HDMI-1 so it figures that this is an important consideration when setting up a new resolution (called a “mode”).
3. Next I issued the following commands:

xrandr --newmode "2560x1600R" 268.50 2560 2608 2640 2720 1600 1603 1609 1646 +hsync -vsync

xrandr --addmode HDMI-1 2560x1600R

From here I used the user interface to select the new resolution.

References

• https://community.intel.com/t5/Intel-NUCs/4k-60Hz-on-Linux-on-NUC7-and-audio/td-p/595288
• https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=242871
• https://www.dell.com/hr/business/p/dell-u3011/pd
• https://askubuntu.com/questions/911148/how-can-i-get-4k60-output-over-hdmi-2-0-on-my-kaby-lake-nuc
• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7016619?page=2
• https://www.dell.com/community/Monitors/U3011-can-t-get-2560×1600-resolution/td-p/4019735
• https://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-2103591.html
• https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read-Only/Unable-to-get-2560×1600-resolution-from-Dell-U3011-connected-to/td-p/4103193