How to: desktops in basement then run cable to rooms.

[Leo03619]

Hey everything and thanks for your help!

this may not be the right forum, if so please tell me where to post. 
 

building a new house and I have my office ( first floor) and kids room are up stairs ( 4 rooms)

 

I would prefer to not have their loud desktops in their room or my office, can’t I just run a cable from their room to the basement. Maybe thunderbolt? I could have sworn I saw Linus do this on one video,

 

what’s the best way to just have monitors upstairs and mouses headphones ect

 

thanks!! 

 

[Privat344]

I am pretty sure he uses optical(or analog or somthing) Thunderbolt, but said he has problems with it, and also uses optical(or analog or something) HDMI/DP cables.

[Shimejii]

I say this with the best intentions possible, Dont even bother. Its just not worth the  headache for getting them all to work let alone the cost.

 

Also Desktops arent loud, just get a beefy cooler, run the fans low enough and it wont be loud at all if you care about noise. Not only will this be WAY cheaper, since just buying a big cooler like this is generally 70-130$ per desktop, it will just work.

 

Linus did it because he got it sponsored, and he has a Rack mounted case and system. Tech youtubers like him do stuff like that because it gets clicks. If you watched most of his vids about it, its a MASSIVE headache and he almost always requires Jake to fix it whenever something goes wrong.

 

Getting The Thunderbolt cables to work well can be a problem, you need very specific hardware and cables that tend to be quite expensive. Wiring it to each room during construction is Fairly simple, if you have to do it after the Drywall is up, its not gonna be a good time. Getting the mice, monitor and keyboard to play well will also be kind of a pain depending on the type.

[BondiBlue]

Linus has done this for quite a while, but he can justify it a number of ways. The computers being loud is not a very good justification. Even very high end computers can run very quietly if they have proper cooling. My primary desktop could be considered a decent (albeit slightly older) gaming PC, and the only reason it makes any noise under load is because I have a loud GPU installed. If I was using a GPU with a better cooler (which I was previously) the system hardly makes any noise at all. Heck, the CPU I have installed is incapable of making the heatsink hot enough to speed the fans up much at all. 

 

I would strongly recommend making the desktops quieter rather than trying to implement a complicated workaround that adds cost, complexity, and potentially a lot of inconvenience. You'd be looking at spending a decent amount of money for the cabling required, running the cables (especially if the house has finished walls), ways to add connectivity in the rooms (docking stations, display outputs, powered USB, audio, etc.), and you might not even have a perfect experience. Long cable runs of any kind can be a challenge, and the videos that Linus has made on this topic have shown a bunch of examples of the issues he's run into. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

You can somewhat get away with it on the cheap if the cable runs are really short, like 5m or so.  But to do what Linus has done and completely centralise it, you'll be spending more on the hardware to link it all together than the PCs themselves cost.

[The 8-Bit Time Traveller]

What I did to get around the same issue is to have a headless computer in a place where it doesn't bother me, and then a lower machine hooked up to my screen. I use Steam streaming for gaming, and can play most of my steam games on the couch streaming to my Nvidia Shield. Dead silent as far is it goes.

 

In my case the gaming PC is not even in my house, it is in another building on the other side of the farm with a Ubiquiti wireless link to my house.

 

There are occasional hiccups, but it works well enough for me to overlook them.

Sidenote, I am not into competitive gaming, so the slight input lag is not an issue for me

[Alex Atkin UK]

16 hours ago, The 8-Bit Time Traveller said:

There are occasional hiccups, but it works well enough for me to overlook them.

Sidenote, I am not into competitive gaming, so the slight input lag is not an issue for me

Its an option, but I'm not a competitive gamer either but I notice the quality loss and latency of streaming immediately and find it extremely annoying.

[The 8-Bit Time Traveller]

3 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Its an option, but I'm not a competitive gamer either but I notice the quality loss and latency of streaming immediately and find it extremely annoying.

I used to have my gaming rig in the house and streaming over gigabit to the switch there was no noticeable slowdown/lagging on very rare occasions you might get a bit of compression artifacting, but overall it is a very smooth experience

[Alex Atkin UK]

22 minutes ago, The 8-Bit Time Traveller said:

I used to have my gaming rig in the house and streaming over gigabit to the switch there was no noticeable slowdown/lagging on very rare occasions you might get a bit of compression artifacting, but overall it is a very smooth experience

The fact you didn't notice it, doesn't mean its not there and others can't.  There is ALWAYS quality loss and latency, that's inherent to using video compression at any bitrate.

Also made worse by the fact I've gotten used to 4K 60-120fps HDR, although that's not even what I was comparing at the time.  That and I sometimes play pinball games where latency is probably more obvious than any other genre of game.

[The 8-Bit Time Traveller]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

The fact you didn't notice it, doesn't mean its not there and others can't.  There is ALWAYS quality loss and latency, that's inherent to using video compression at any bitrate.

Also made worse by the fact I've gotten used to 4K 60-120fps HDR, although that's not even what I was comparing at the time.  That and I sometimes play pinball games where latency is probably more obvious than any other genre of game.

Absolutely true, I only played at 1080p / 720p, I think it will me much more noticeable at 4k. The tradeoff is simplicity over quality and latency. For me it was worth it.