PC Master Race

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Switching monitors between two machines (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 1 year ago by Cheery@lemmy.sdf.org to c/pcmasterrace@lemmy.world

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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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[–] zaggynl@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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-qt

That or get another set of peripherals?

Edit:
Does your monitor have a USB hub?
Could use that and then swap the USB Hub cable between PCs, connect your Personal PC via Display Port and your home PC via HDMI, then switch using the monitor's menu button?

[–] Cheery@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

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.