Getting 4k resolution at 60hz on Intel NUC 7th Gen

  • Hi guys, so i bought a Intel NUC7i5BNH and on the whole im pretty happy with it, i am fully aware of bitstreaming issues for HD audio, but i dont have audio equipment capable of this right now and probably wont have for some years so its of no concern to me.

    In any case that aside, i decided to get the final bit of the puzzle solved for me, which is 4k resolution at 60hz output to my Samsung ue49ks8000 TV, which is capable of this, so i thought hey this should just work out of the box right, i just plug in a high speed hdmi cable from the NUC's HDMI port and connect it to my TV right?, err no its not that easy.

    So whilst i could then select 4k resolution via kodi i couldn't select 60 hz, it just isnt shown, the highest refresh rate i could achieve is 30 hz, hmm odd, so played around in the bios trying different options, played around on the tv trying to see if there was a magical option to "turn on 60 hz" for a particular hdmi input, nope, nothing!.

    So a bit of googling later and i happened across a post where somebody has a similar experience and ended up switching from using the HDMI port to using the USB-C connector (its actually thunderbolt i believe) and converting to HDMI, they linked to the following cable:-

    ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1503396892&sr=1-2&keywords=choetech usb c 60hz

    Which in short gives me exactly what i want, 4k resolution at 60 hz, now im not saying this is THE answer, perhaps i had a duff cable (amazon basics high speed [latest revision]) maybe i was missing a setting or something, i dunno, but hey it works for me and as far as i can tell so far (only had it in place for 12 hours) it seems to work flawlessly, so this is purely a post to help out anybody else who might have a Intel NUC 7th gen and wants to achieve the same.

    edit - note to self, you also need to enable UHD on the TV for the HDMI port that the NUC is connected to, without doing this step you still only get 30 hz max refresh rate

    Edited 2 times, last by binhex (August 23, 2017 at 9:32 AM).

  • I've seen talk that the USB-C converter method actually works with HD audio as well.

    thats interesting, i did wonder whether this is the case, unfortunately as i stated in my post i dont have the audio equipment to verify this or not, but i would love to hear the result from somebody who does :)

    Edited once, last by binhex (August 22, 2017 at 2:29 PM).