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tfp
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
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KVM Switch

Mon Jun 01, 2020 5:29 pm

Does anyone have a recommendation on a KVM switch? With all this working from I am sharing a monitor or two between my work laptop and my personal desktop. I game on the desktop and have a 2k monitor and a secondary 1920x1200 so I was thinking of a dual to dual setup with DisplayPort so that I can get a converter for the older DVI monitor or when I upgrade to something newer it will be usable on the KVM.

I was looking at:
ATEN CS1942DP
IOGEAR GCS1932M and GCS1942

Outside of this the Level1Techs DP1.4 KVMs looks interesting but a bit out of my price range and is pre-production.

So does any one have a KVM they share with their part time gaming system? What do you have and how do you like it?
 
ludi
Lord High Gerbil
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Re: KVM Switch

Mon Jun 01, 2020 6:18 pm

I have an older, 2-port I/O Gear that does USB/DVI switching, and which surprisingly is still available from CDW. One feature it has that might be useful when moving down a server rack to see if everything is awake, is the ability to fast-switch the display only, which avoids the reconnect lag for moving the USB interface. One feature it does NOT have is the ability to switch multiple monitors. I've adapted to this by keeping my second monitor, and a spare wireless mouse, on my personal PC so I can monitor activity on the main PC's second display while switching a work PC or secondary Linux machine into the primary.

I bought the unit used about four years ago, and it generally works fine, although in I've had a handful of instances where it went batty and started causing weird USB issues. These have been solved by power-cycling the unit. I don't use the analog audio switching feature because it caused ground noise problems. Couldn't say how well a newer HDMI version would work but if you're spending north of $200 on a good name brand, it would be hard to go wrong.

EDIT: Comparing the ATEN and second IO/Gear model, it strikes me their size, port layouts, capabilities, and part of their model numbers are identical. Looks like a case of same OEM design, different branding with minor cosmetic changes. I would buy whichever is cheaper.
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just brew it!
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Re: KVM Switch

Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:19 pm

I've been happy with my IOGear DVI/USB/Audio KVM. Still going strong a decade or so on. FWIW it is actually a re-badged ATEN. If current models are of similar quality, I think the ones you listed would be reasonable choices.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
tfp
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
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Re: KVM Switch

Mon Jun 01, 2020 10:52 pm

Thanks for the feedback ludi, jbi!

I had read that ATEN and IOGear are the same company and I am somewhat surprised that the ATEN kvm is cheaper on CDW as IOGear is the consumer band.
 
tfp
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Topic Author
Posts: 3413
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2003 11:09 am

Re: KVM Switch

Tue Jun 23, 2020 1:51 pm

I ended up getting an ATEN CS1942DP. So far so good.

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