I will shortly be building a new pc and getting a new monitor which my aten cs1784a won’t support due to that kvm being dvi only.
I have one mouse, one keyboard and one monitor and up to 4 pcs connected, though one of those is actually a virtual win10 machine with a vfio passed through gpu hosted on my main linux machine.
In researching a new kvm I came across the 4 port dp1.4 single monitor kvm sold here, but I’ve also found one sold by connectpro - UDP-14AP, that one claims edid emulation which i think I get at the moment with my aten kvm. It seems that the l1tech kvm doesn’t do this? For one monitor is it actually necessary to have edid emulation? All the problems I’ve read concerning it seem to involve multiple monitors.
I also read a criticism of the l1tech kvm that it was “based on an hdmi core” but I have no idea what this means, or if it is indeed “bad”
Any advice or clarification would be gratefully received.
I don’t think so? Most times, you don’t want EDID. It is very limiting in refreshrate, VRR, etc. It’s meant to be a hardware solution if software is not available to you. So, the best solution is to get a regular DisplayPort KVM and fixing the EDID situation in software.
In Windows 10 you can use persistent windows:
In Windows 11 you can just tick the “keep windows locations” box in your display settings.
We do have EDID KVMs, if you have to go that route. We have:
DisplayPort 1.2 - 2 PC, 2 Monitor
HDMI 2.0 - 2 PC, 2 Monitor
HDMI 2.1 - 4 PC, 1 Monitor
HDMI 2.1 4 PC, 2 Monitor
But yes the regular DisplayPort 1.4 KVMs are not monitor emulation.
I also have no clue what that means, Lol. They might be referring to our older HDMI KVMs we no longer sell. We have newer HDMI 2.0 and 2.1 KVMs that have fixed many of the older problems we had. The older problems were purely based on the HDMI standard being terrible to work with, rather than a problem with the KVM itself.
If you don’t like the KVM we do accept a 30 day return period, so it’s pretty risk free to try. Just keep all your packaging and don’t damage the KVM.
Also, If you’d like a deal potentially on a scratch and dent, reach out to me and I’ll see what we have at the office.
Thank you for your questions and hopefully I answered some! (ps moved your post to the “product inquiry” category)
Thankyou for your reply:) So it is possible from what you tell me that I may not being getting any advantage from edid emulation in my current setup (assuming my aten does have it). I intend for my new monitor to support variable refresh rate for gaming in the windows vm, so if that is contra-indicated with edid emulation then I should probably avoid?
A 30 day return is good but since I live in the UK it might be tricky to take advantage of:) This is why I’m trying to educate myself a bit since the connectpro kvm I have seen is also shipped from the US.
At my last check on the product pages it seems that the 5gb 4 port kvm is out of stock, does the 10gb one have usb2 type a ports for mouse and keyboard? I’m not sure there is a ‘blue cube’ for connecting my ibm model m keyboard to usb-c!
The UDP-14AP can also come with DP 2.1 cables, now this seems a lttle overkill for a product that is DP 1.4 but has some future proofing potential, there is some implication on their website that optical fibre DP1.4 or DP2.1 cables are need for the max resolution/refresh combinations, what cable gen/type would I need to have the maximum potential from the L1Tech kvm?
Once again thankyou for engaging with me in this conversation, I’m currently investing in a threadripper setup that I hope will last me the same ten years my currrent i7-4770 has lasted. I want to get the kit right first time:) (Threadrippers are expensive!)
