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

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/pcmasterrace

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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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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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!