Hello all, I’m looking for a switch/kvm for my home setup. ive been through a few tries and none of them have worked for one reason or another.
I have two machines,
A windows 11 work laptop
- USB-C out, both USB and display port.
- HDMI out
- USB 2.0 out
A Ubuntu based personal server
- Displayport out
- USB-C out (no Displayport)
For displays, I have a single double wide 4k monitor
Additionally I have a USB-C hub all my peripherals are connected to.
Tbh, just run the Ubuntu box headless and ssh into it. You can do anything you’d need to. Even better, swap it to Debian or something like that, because Ubuntu is unfortunately kinda undergoing gradual enshitification lately.
Anything that can do better than 1080p is insanely expensive or cheap and flakey. I gave up looking and just got a new monitor with a KVM built in.
Most have one USB-C with 65w+ PD which includes the keyboard and mouse and then add 1-3 more slots that have HDMI and/or DisplatPort + USB-A for the keyboard and mouse.
Keen to know what you’ve tried. Or if anyone has found something good that isn’t silly expensive or cheap and dodgy.
Yeah that’s what ive been seeing as well, but honestly its hard to look up products and be sure they are real in the AI age (ironic, right?)
Currently I’m using my company supplied Dell WD19TB which I cannot recommend as it needed service already and doesn’t support Displayport in from my server. Before that I was using the built in one on my monitor, which so far is my best option but I was looking for a discreet box due to the monitor arm cabling.
Make sure that, whatever switch you want to get, the switch supports simulating output (edit simulation/storing) and USB devices. Otherwise every switching action would cause disconnect and connect actions on the hosts.
I picked up one of these ugreen displayport KVMs a couple months ago and so far have been happy with it:
https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Displayport-Support-Monitor-Keyboard/dp/B0CFFFHFJT
The only issue I have had is that if I’m switched to computer B and computer A goes to sleep, I cannot wake it up through the switch. This was not a deal breaker for me because I have easy access to the power button of both computers. I wonder if this issue may be resolved by powering the switch with a USB-C power plug, since it otherwise requires USB power from both computer connections.
Awesome :) does the input support display port over usb-c or will i need an hdmi to displayport adapter for the windows laptop?
I’m using this as well and came in to recommend it. One machine is thunderbolt to DP. One is DP to DP. Both Windows machines and both work well. I used this cable https://a.co/d/diTREUK however I’d look for a higher DP/thunderbolt revision now.
I’ve been very happy with my Monoprice “Blackbird 4K DisplayPort 1.4 USB 3.0 4x1 KVM Switch, 4K@60Hz, HDR, YCbCr 4:4:4, HDCP 2.2”. I run an ultrawide at 3840x1600 @ 144 Hz, or HDR at 120 Hz, G-Sync both, and it works wonderfully. It took some effort to get all the required devices using the same connections - went through quite a few “USB-C to DP” cables from Amazon that had to be returned because they couldn’t do the high refresh like they claimed … but once I got everything set up, it’s worked like a dream, 3+ years and counting now I think.
