Moving Gaming PC to Server Closet: Remote Access and Hardware Compatibility Questions

[Luxanius]

Hello there,

 

I’m not sure if I opened the Thread under the right Topic.

I‘d like to move my gaming pc out of my home office. Since I was planning to acquire a server closet anyways for my plex and media server I was thinking if it was possible to also move my pc into the server closet in it‘s own rack (it will still be runing windows). The main problem that I found was, that I don‘t know what software to use for remote Access. 

 

I‘d like to use my macbook as a client which will be connectet via ethernet. Also I have a lot of peripheral hardware. So I‘m running three 4k monitors and a lot of USB devices. I can‘t seem to find a piece of software, that allows me to stream all of my three displays with latency and graphical fidelity that also forwards my USB Devices.

 

Also I‘m wondering if 2.5 gbit ethernet is enough bandwith to drive all of this. 

 

Thanks for reading this far and thanks for your help

[leadeater]

I don't think it's such a good idea to remote connect over network for gaming however your best choice is most likely Parsec.

 

If you can run a fibre Thunderbolt cable to a Thunderbolt dock that would be much better, it's a "local" PC still.

[Luxanius]

12 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I don't think it's such a good idea to remote connect over network for gaming however your best choice is most likely Parsec.

 

If you can run a fibre Thunderbolt cable to a Thunderbolt dock that would be much better, it's a "local" PC still.

I was thinking about that too but there were several issues. 

First I dont think I can pull this off with my current mobo and cpu combination. I‘m rockin a ryzen 5800x3d on a asus prime b550 wifi. I don‘t think there exist any thunderbolt add-in cards for this. Also I‘d probably need these fancy corning tunderbolt cables for the distance I need to bridge plus a very beefy thunderbolt dock to drive all of those peripheral devices. The total cost would be way to much for me..

[Senzelian]

Thunderbolt wouldn't be a good idea anyway, as it's simply not reliable, especially not with three 4K displays.

If you're going with cables, then you should look at optical DisplayPort cables and some form of USB extenders or fiber USB cables.

 

Other than that, Parsec. Tho that's not going to be fun.

[leadeater]

20 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Thunderbolt wouldn't be a good idea anyway, as it's simply not reliable, especially not with three 4K displays.

If you're going with cables, then you should look at optical DisplayPort cables and some form of USB extenders or fiber USB cables.

All 3 have problems, good quality Thunderbolt doesn't have much more problems than USB or DisplayPort, just have to watch out for bandwidth limits for multiple screens but that is also true for DisplayPort.

 

It's going to be a problem unless you run every cable individually and forgo any docks other than for USB, I don't think that is much a good idea either. 

 

But in general long distance connectivity do a gaming PC isn't a good idea at all anyway 

[Senzelian]

27 minutes ago, leadeater said:

good quality Thunderbolt doesn't have much more problems than USB or DisplayPort

Believe me, it does. I have tried many different combinations of docks, motherboards, AICs, and monitors for years now. When Linus did his upgrade to the current generation of optical Corning TB3 cables, I had already been running mine for over a month. Thunderbolt compared to USB or DP is simply nowhere near as reliable. Sometimes you receive no picture, sometimes your USB peripherals don't work or the connection doesn't work at all until you change TB ports or restart the dock or your PC. It's just not fun.

 

In comparison, the Lindy optical DP 1.4 cable that I use now just works. Every. Single. Time. And it's much cheaper too!

 

27 minutes ago, leadeater said:

But in general long distance connectivity do a gaming PC isn't a good idea at all anyway

I think it's fantastic! I don't hear my PC and I don't feel the heat. The setup is easy and not even all that expensive if done right. If there was a better one-cable solution, that runs DP and USB without relying on TB and you'd be able to use your monitor as a hub, then I think everyone should do it. 

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Believe me, it does. I have tried many different combinations of docks, motherboards, AICs, and monitors for years now. When Linus did his upgrade to the current generation of optical Corning TB3 cables, I had already been running mine for over a month. Thunderbolt compared to USB or DP is simply nowhere near as reliable. Sometimes you receive no picture, sometimes your USB peripherals don't work or the connection doesn't work at all until you change TB ports or restart the dock or your PC. It's just not fun.

 

In comparison, the Lindy optical DP 1.4 cable that I use now just works. Every. Single. Time. And it's much cheaper too!

I have been using a Thunderbolt dock with my laptop going on 5 years now with multiple monitors etc without any such problems. Maybe it's a distance thing and signal problems?

[Luxanius]

9 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Believe me, it does. I have tried many different combinations of docks, motherboards, AICs, and monitors for years now. When Linus did his upgrade to the current generation of optical Corning TB3 cables, I had already been running mine for over a month. Thunderbolt compared to USB or DP is simply nowhere near as reliable. Sometimes you receive no picture, sometimes your USB peripherals don't work or the connection doesn't work at all until you change TB ports or restart the dock or your PC. It's just not fun.

 

In comparison, the Lindy optical DP 1.4 cable that I use now just works. Every. Single. Time. And it's much cheaper too!

 

I think it's fantastic! I don't hear my PC and I don't feel the heat. The setup is easy and not even all that expensive if done right. If there was a better one-cable solution, that runs DP and USB without relying on TB and you'd be able to use your monitor as a hub, then I think everyone should do it. 

Since you have tried different variants; is there a cheaper solution than corning cables if I wanted to run it over TB?

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

In comparison, the Lindy optical DP 1.4 cable that I use now just works. Every. Single. Time. And it's much cheaper too!

Oh also I forgot DP can daisy chain which is pretty nice, so might be able to get away with single optical cable for that so long as the monitors have a DP out to chain them. Running 3 DP optical cables to me just isn't really a viable idea, that why is I preference TB because of that. 3 DP optical and 1 USB optical I just think is bad. 2 total seems a lot better to me.

[Luxanius]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Oh also I forgot DP can daisy chain which is pretty nice, so might be able to get away with single optical cable for that so long as the monitors have a DP out to chain them. Running 3 DP optical cables to me just isn't really a viable idea, that why is I preference TB because of that. 3 DP optical and 1 USB optical I just think is a bad. 2 total seems a lot better to me.

I‘d like to use TB but there are to many obstacles. Despite the price of the Corning Cables (which I would need for that distance), my MoBo doesnt support TB out of the box and I don‘t think it is possible to equip it with TB after the fact..

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, Luxanius said:

I‘d like to use TB but there are to many obstacles. Despite the price of the Corning Cables (which I would need for that distance), my MoBo doesnt support TB out of the box and I don‘t think it is possible to equip it with TB after the fact..

You can add TB PCIe cards to get it however as you said the cable along with the dock makes it very unpalatable. My TB dock, laptop, monitors etc are all work equipment so how much it costs doesn't worry me so much.

[Senzelian]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

I have been using a Thunderbolt dock with my laptop going on 5 years now with multiple monitors etc without any such problems. Maybe it's a distance thing and signal problems?

With optical TB there would be no signal loss of course, so that's theoretically not an issue. I assume it has something to do with timing. However, this also happens with regular copper cables. We're usually running Lenovo Workstation Docks (TB3 and TB4) here at the office and it happens relatively often that there are issues with the connection. Usually, it's the cable that causes issues, but sometimes it can also be a USB C port on either device, laptop, or docking station, that can wear out.

 

In any case, TB is always less reliable than DP & USB. More bandwidth over smaller connectors and thinner cables is never a good recipe for reliability. 

 

1 hour ago, Luxanius said:

Since you have tried different variants; is there a cheaper solution than corning cables if I wanted to run it over TB?

Unfortunately not. I haven't found any other manufacturer crazy enough to develop such cables. 

 

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Oh also I forgot DP can daisy chain which is pretty nice, so might be able to get away with single optical cable for that so long as the monitors have a DP out to chain them. Running 3 DP optical cables to me just isn't really a viable idea, that why is I preference TB because of that. 3 DP optical and 1 USB optical I just think is bad. 2 total seems a lot better to me.

Yeah, I agree. It's not fun having to deal with that many cables, especially because they're relatively thick as they have to carry fiber and copper, unlike optical TB. 

 

 

[aggie113]

Briefly looked into this for my desktop.  You could run fiber display port cables for each monitor and another fiber for the USB but the setup wouldn't be cheap.  The video cables could be cheaper if something like 20m or more if you have a longer run.  

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Senzelian said:

With optical TB there would be no signal loss of course, so that's theoretically not an issue.

There is, it's just called attenuation. This is where the maximum distance comes from along with transmit power etc. Currently Corning says 100m maximum for their newest optical TB cables so I'd start factoring this in above 30m since movement of the connectors creates attenuation too.

 

1 hour ago, Senzelian said:

I assume it has something to do with timing.

Attenuation causes skew rays, essentially noise or light also hitting the receiving sensor at a different wavelength.

 

Optical is often thought as of not having the problems of copper but it actually does, just in different ways and exhibits in extremes. That's where you can get signal dropouts and then come back for example. This is why we have fibre cleaning tools at work because dust causes this as well, attenuation (not an issue for Optical DP/TB/USB).