Will this work? DIY 4 Monitor KVM

My home desktop pc supports 4 monitors. My work laptop supports 4 monitors. When I work from home, switching all the cables is a pain in the butt.

What I'd would like to do is:

• plug monitors 1&2 into a USB dual monitor display adapter
• plug monitors 3&4 into a different USB dual monitor display adapter
• connect the display adapters to a powered USB 3 hub
• connect keyboard and mouse to the same hub
• connect the hub to a USB A/B switch
• connect the A/B switch to each computer

This would be, in effect, a 2 port 4 monitor KVM switch.

Here's a cheesy illustration:(Keyboard and Mouse left out to reduce clutter)

My question is: Would this work?

I can get the display adapters, hub, and switch for about $150 but I don't want to spend that much money to find out I'm an idiot.

Or, do you know of an alternative that isn't $500?

Solution 1:

This might sort of work, but not well. I wouldn't recommend it.

USB display adapters (e.g. DisplayLink devices) have poor graphical performance -- they're acceptable for basic desktop use, but some operations like scrolling or moving windows around may be choppy, and more demanding applications like fullscreen video or gaming will not perform acceptably. I'm not sure how well running two of them on a single USB3 link will work, either.

(You'll also want to make sure that the A/B switch you're looking at supports USB3. Many inexpensive USB A/B switches only support USB2.)

Solution 2:

Okay, so here is what I ended up with. I've been using this setup for close to a year now and it's really worked out good for me. The only quirk is that the windows collect to one monitor when switching but, since I'm on my work machine all day and not switching back and forth, this isn't a big deal to me.

What I did was:

• plug monitors 1, 2 & 3 into a powered USB triple monitor display adapter
• plug monitors 4 into a USB single monitor display adapter
• plug the single monitor display adapter into the triple monitor display adapter
• connect the triple monitor display adapter to a passive USB A/B switch
• connect the A/B switch to each computer

This creates an effective 4 monitor KVM switch.

The triple display adapter is also a USB hub. This works out wonderful because I plug in my keyboard/mouse USB receiver, a web cam, and a USB headset into it and they simply work for whichever machine I'm on.

Now that I'm working from home 100% of the time, this system is a dream and costs around $150 to setup (not including the computers and monitors).

If your monitors support DisplayPort 1.2 MST, you have other options available. Here is a link about daisy chaining DisplayPort monitors. It's Dell specific but gives you the general idea.

Daisy Chain DisplayPort MST Monitors