Hello! I’m in a situation, where I have a work laptop and a personal computer, the latter is used mostly for gaming. In order to switch between them I have to plug all the peripherals from one machine to the other, to help with that I bought a dock, to which I can connect everything, and connect the dock via one USB-C cable. The trouble begins with the monitors, as my laptop supports thunderbolt, but my motherboard doesn’t, so it’s a bit of a chore to switch them.
To alleviate the issue I’m considering changing my motherboard to one that has thunderbolt 4 support, as I have one 4K monitor and one full HD, and I’ve read it should support them fine on one cable. Is this a good solution? I’m thinking I might run into some issues with monitors not being connected directly to my GPU, latency or otherwise.
I beseech thee for help o masters of the PC.
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You could look at KVM switches which allow you to switch input with the touch of a button, although they could be pricey.
Second idea that comes to mind is installing something like parsec on your laptop and just remoting into it from your desktop.
That sounds like you could make use of a KVM Switch. Something like this:
KVM switches will fall short if you use FreeSync/Gsync. Most screens have a USB passthrough to which you could connect a hub that handles all your peripherals and you would only have to switch the connection of the hub.
You could also try a virtual solution like barrier.
I’ll have a look, thanks. Ideally I wouldn’t have both a KVM and a hub, as the hub already does most of the work, but it is a solution.
I have mine setup as so:
2 HDMI cables from dock to monitors 2 display port cables from GPU to monitors
When I plug in my laptop the monitors switch over to the dock HDMI ports, when I plug in my desktop the monitors switch over to the display port from my GPU
That sure would work for me, just more mess for the existing cable mass under my desk 😅
I see a couple of people suggesting that you use a KVM. If you go that route, make sure you get one that matches your refresh rate, or you will be stuck at 20-30hz.
If you have the ports, you can connect the computers via different ports on the monitors and use the monitor buttons to swap between. A KVM would still be useful to move the mouse and keyboard.
I use one of these for my peripherals. https://a.co/d/5EAgnG4
KB, mouse, mic, and Webcam. All three monitors have display cables going to both machines. I don’t use both simultaneously, so one stays in sleep mode, that way monitor input will auto switch.
That’s the cheapest/easiest solution I’ve come up with.
That sounds like a solution, although I was hoping I could do it with less cables, there’s already a mess under my desk 😅 I’ll check it out though, tanks!
Ahhh yea, unfortunately don’t have a better solution for that. Was easy for me since I use a three monitor arm, so I just hid all the cables in/on that bad boy lol. Good luck!
Software options are: Synergy (software KVM) (free version is limited, https://github.com/debauchee/barrier is the open source variant)
NoMachine (remote control software, server/client) nomachine.com (free for personal use)
RDP (Windows Remote Desktop)from work PC to personal PC or the other way around
bit more DIY: Sunshine/Moonlight-QT to stream your personal desktop to your work laptop: https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qtThat or get another set of peripherals?
It does have multiple ports I could use, though I was hoping I didn’t need additional cables, but sure enough cables are cheaper than a new mobo or a physical KVM.
