I had a bit of an oddball question about the desktop setup and was hoping you might be able to get me an answer:
Context: my current setup
I recently downsized to a mobile desk-on-wheels setup with an eco-flow battery backup and a dell WD22 Thunderbolt dock I use to manage peripherals and output to two monitors. I currently have spots for two-laptops: one work laptop, one personal. I just swap the dock’s thunderbolt cable between the two depending on if I’m working or doing personal stuff. I also have a 10th gen intel + RTX 3070 setup in the closet that I remote in to for gaming via sunlight/moonlight.
What I’m considering
I’ve been considering selling my personal laptop + desktop and upgrading to the Framework Desktop AI Max+ 395. The idea being I can use this for all my personal stuff (Software Development, Gaming, some ML/AI experimentation) in one compact package while also updating my dated hardware.
The problem is that I don’t want to run a second set of video cables / manage a KVM for switching my keyboard/mouse/web cam inputs. I was hoping to utilize the dell dock I already have in place and use thunderbolt to pull both video and peripherals to my work laptop and my framework desktop.
I don’t know much about hardware but would something like this be possible? or am I pretty much just stuck with wiring another set of DP / HDMI cables and a KVM if I want to go with this approach?
I think running a KVM is pretty much your best option. I run daisy chained DP dual monitors and switch between my work laptop and desktop. Ethernet I split with a switch, and mouse is actually bluetooth which also supports multiple devices.
The webcam I actually recommend plugging it directly to which ever device needs this, I assume the work laptop. Mostly out of privacy concerns but most webcams perform better this way anyway.
You can keep doing the “tb cable switch between devices” like you do now if that is no issue to you (that is what I currently do between my FW Desktop and worklaptop).
Or get a KVM switch to not have to do the cable switching.
**So you’re saying that your framework desktop supports thunderbolt for video out as well as peripheral inputs the same way a laptop does?**That’s basically the crux of my question.
I’ve only ever used a thunderbolt dock with a laptop so I wasn’t even sure if framework’s desktop would support the standard. I guess the framework desktop is using a mobile chipset so it would sort of make sense for it to work.
Not an answer for your webcam. And assuming Windows. If I could marry my Logitech MX Master 3S Mouse and MX Mechanical keyboards I would I love it that much (and a MX Mechanical Mini that I travel with and used to bring to work when I used to work) . I exaggerate for effect with the marry part of course lol.
But with the MX series mouse and keyboard I can put the mouse to the display border of my choice (I configured to also have to press the Ctrl key) and the combination keyboard plus mouse switches its activity between 3 computers. And its very reliable and stable. Then all I have to do is switch the active input on my monitor manually.
Yes. I can confirm. I hooked up an OWC Thunderbolt 5 Hub, and I get 40Gbs. To that I hooked up these components:
OWC Thunderbolt 4 10G Ethernet Adapter (enums as PCIe)
ACASIS 80Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure which also shows the SSD as native NVMe. This is great because you can run all the native tools unlike plain USB enclosures.
SMSL PO100 XU316 A/D Tosllink for audio to my amp.
To the other port I have a Cable Matters Dual 4K 60Hz USB C KVM Switch (apparently obsolete now, had it sitting around) so I can share with my work laptop. The only glitch I see is the Lenovo laptop pops a warning in Windows saying something about the monitor may not be running at full capability, but everything seems right…. 4K 60Hz. KVM Windows issue with laptop, no issue in Linux/Windows on the Desktop. The main point on the KVM is I get 4K video through it from desktop USB 4.0 port with no problems.
Thanks to everyone in the thread for your help.