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.

  • @why
    link
    English
    1111 months ago

    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.

    • @CheeryOP
      link
      English
      211 months ago

      Remoting is certainly something I haven’t thought of, latency shouldn’t be a problem, only I’d need both machines to be on. Thanks for suggesting, it would save some money.

      • @why
        link
        English
        111 months ago

        Nowadays you can get really responsive remote desktop software with parsec or sunshine/moonshine.

    • @wallguy22@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      111 months ago

      I have a couple of KVM switches from Amazon that were only ~$20. They fit my needs perfectly.