Hi all, I had wanted a small display that I can attach to my PC case and view CPU, GPU temps. Most of the small displays meant for this purpose were from niche brands that were pretty costly (>4k rupees). And they seemed very narrow in use too, like it won't act like a separate display but only acted as a display to the monitoring software provided by these niche brands. In short, expensive and useless. 

I just went through some robotics/hardware related websites and got this 5 inch display (link above). You can connect using a HDMI cable for display and a micro-usb cable for power. Seems pretty simple right? Except, it did not work and I tried with multiple PCs, laptops. Display would turn on but then turn black soon. It simply didn't display anything no matter how much I tried. 

Then I came across this fix that worked pretty instantly. Turns out, every display has a small chip containing EDID (Extended Display Identification Data) data that handshakes with the OS. The OS then picks the right resolution, timings, and refresh rate for the monitor. Except, this monitor lacked proper EDID instructions, so Windows defaulted to standard timings with a high pixel clock (\~33.9 MHz) instead of the lower clock (\~29.5 MHz) the display's HDMI controller needed. This caused the display to constantly drop signal and stop working. You can easily rectify this using a tool called CRU (Custom Resolution Utility).

  
Here is the procedure to fix the issue using CRU (took help of Gemini for formatting)

**1. Download and Launch CRU:**

Download Custom Resolution Utility (CRU), extract the archive, right-click `CRU.exe`, and choose Run as Administrator with the display connected via HDMI.

**2. Select Display and Clear Presets:**

Select the small display from the top dropdown menu (it may appear as NOEDID or Generic Non-PnP Monitor). Delete all entries under both Established resolutions and Standard resolutions.

**3. Add Custom Timings:**

Under Detailed resolutions, select the existing profile (or click Add...) and set the timing mode to Manual or CVT-RB (Reduced Blanking) with the display resolution, refresh rate (\~60Hz probably).

**4. Lower the Pixel Clock:**

Adjust the horizontal blanking/sync values until the Pixel clock drops below 30.00 MHz (aim for \~29.50 MHz). This stops the display's HDMI controller from crashing.

**5.Remove Extension Blocks & Apply:**

Delete any CTA-861 entries under the Extension blocks section, click OK to close CRU, and run `restart64.exe` from the CRU folder to reload your graphics driver.

These steps fixed my display and it started working fine. I posted this only so that: A) small displays that contain a HDMI insert can probably be made to work this way and B) These displays can be preferred over the really expensive ones.

Small Displays: Solution for anyone who faces this problem