I found my way onto the forum while looking into KVMs and finding the one on this website.
I’m trying to find out if it would fulfil my needs.
I have:
1 Acer Nitro XV340CKP 144Hz 1440p monitor with DisplayPort 1.4
2 Dell U2713HM 60Hz 1440p monitors with DisplayPort 1.2
A Corsair K70 Keyboard (this uses 2 USB ports for some reason)
A Logitech MX Master 2S Mouse
A Logitech C920 HD Pro Webcam
Into these I need to connect two computers and be able to switch between them:
A custom built desktop, that features a variety of USB ports that you’d expect and a Zotac 3080RTX with 1 HDMI and 3 Display Ports
A Macbook Pro with 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports
I’m ok with the macbook only connecting to the Acer and one of the Dell monitors, while the PC uses all three. It’s important that I don’t introduce any latency on the PC. I won’t be repeatedly switching back and forth, a couple of times per day. Would the DP 1.4 KVM from level 1 techs be suitable or is something else more suited to my needs?
Triple monitor is always a challenge. EDIT: KVM that will do triple monitor with dedicated ports for each are expensive and rare.
However you have displayport 1.4 and 1.2 equipment which support multi stream transport (MST).
A device like this:
This could help solve your challenge of video feeds. However the multiple refresh rates may be an issue, so you would need to test the splitter first.
For the multiple usb ports, you can add a powered hub downstream of the KVM to get more ports.
An alternative to consider if you are comfortable switching the monitors via their on screen displays would be to just get a usb 3.0 switch. That would let you swap your peripherals with one click and select video inputs just via the OSD. That may be a much cheaper option.
I have two computer quad monitor DP1.4 KVMs you can special order if you want.
the dual monitor DP1.4 KVM with the Club3d DP1.4 → 3x DP1.2 Ihve’ tested and it works really well. Could use that on the secondary display with the switch but… when you string together a bunch of adapters and devices you’re inviting misery.
the “retail” cost of the 4 monitor DP1.4 kvm is probably going to be like $850 +/-.
The club3d one uses display stream compression. I tried a straight mst hub… they do not work well… mst is the devil. I spent many hours working on mst w/dp1.2 to try to get it to work well with surfaces. mst is just the pits by itself.
“you’re inviting misery” … I hear you say it works well.
Correct me if I’m wrong here but I believe Wendel meant it worked well without putting a switch in the mix, but when you add in a switch you’re going to have the potential for unpredictable and unreliable results.
I’m sure it’s a total case-by-case basis so … Buy the adapter from somewhere with a generous return policy?
The club3d adapter throws in display stream compression. It stops being an mst hub and becomes for lack of a better way to describe it an mst switch.
The dp1.4 KVm has been well tested with that particular mst “hub” the dsc aspect makes it 5000% more reliable in general use cases
Other types and brands of mst hub in my experience have consistently been unreliable at best. Without a KVm in the mix. Unless you are running low res/refresh displays. Then it kinda works ok
