Long run remote PC

[Menan]

Country: USA 

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: All games, software development, general productivity

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

 

Hello All,

I'm considering relocating my PC to a rack that I have for my homelab equipment. I wanted to see what suggestions there might be, if it's even conceivable on how to do this. I've watched LTT videos where he has done this in multiple iterations, but the main limiting factor is he is almost always only running a single monitor when doing it. I'm running triple 4k monitors. The 2 flanking monitors are fine at 60hz, but the primary center monitor I want to be able to run at up to 240hz, but I'd settle at 144hz if I needed to.

 

I've got a fairly recent build with an X870E-P / 9950X3D, but being AMD there is no thunderbolt support. Looking at some of the thunderbolt docks, it looks like the CalDigit TS5 wants a thunderbolt 5 port or a "USB4v2 80Gb/s" port. Even this newish board only has a USB 40 Gb/s port. I haven't researched yet if there is a board that has an 80 Gbps USB4v2 port. I was looking at the description of the TS5 and it says this in regards to displays for Windows PCs:

"On Windows, the TS5 supports up to dual 6K 60Hz on Thunderbolt 4 hosts, and up to Dual 8K 60Hz on Thunderbolt 5 hosts. Thunderbolt 5 Windows users can also connect up to Triple 4K 144Hz displays on supported Windows Thunderbolt 5 hosts"

So, it does say it supports triple 4k 144hz, but on TB5. So, if I was restricted to 40 Gb/s, I'm wondering what it can support. The TS4 model that only does thunderbolt 4 from what I can tell says it only supports dual 4k 60hz display.

 

After a little bit of looking, I'm not really seeing any expansion cards for 80 Gb/s USB, do those exist? Would anyone have any suggestions on how I could achieve what I'm looking for here? I would think maybe I'd have to run multiple docks, but even then that wouldn't work with what I have now at least because the motherboard only has a single 40 Gbps port and a single 20 Gbps port which I imagine would even further restrict capabilities.
 

I also considered just running optical usb / display cables individually, but I don't think that is very realistic either. It's probably around 150 ft from where my server rack is to where my workstation is. I'd be hoping to achieve this with a single cable instead of having to run an entire bundle that distance.

I did also consider just using Moonlight or something like that. I do have 10 Gb ethernet run between the locations. But while testing moonlight on another PC in the rack, while it does look really good and run really smooth, I can definitely feel the difference in latency when playing games. So, I don't want to do that as my dedicated full time solution.

 

Thanks

[OddOod]

Welcome to the forums!

21 hours ago, Menan said:

So, it does say it supports triple 4k 144hz, but on TB5. So, if I was restricted to 40 Gb/s, I'm wondering what it can support. The TS4 model that only does thunderbolt 4 from what I can tell says it only supports dual 4k 60hz display.

TB5 is 120Gb/s, TB4 is 40Gb/s, so you could only run 1 4K144 display
That being said, you could get a TB5 PCIe card, but you're adding another failure point to this already fragile chain of extreme performance. 

21 hours ago, Menan said:

I also considered just running optical usb / display cables individually, but I don't think that is very realistic either. It's probably around 150 ft from where my server rack is to where my workstation is. I'd be hoping to achieve this with a single cable instead of having to run an entire bundle that distance.

You can definitely get 50m cables, but I imagine you're punching this through several walls which will require somewhat large holes. 

21 hours ago, Menan said:

did also consider just using Moonlight or something like that. I do have 10 Gb ethernet run between the locations. But while testing moonlight on another PC in the rack, while it does look really good and run really smooth, I can definitely feel the difference in latency when playing games. So, I don't want to do that as my dedicated full time solution.

Yeah, RIPieces Nvidia SHIELD Streaming. That stuff was wicked fast because the GPU would actually encode the frame to mp4 while it was being generated yielding ~0 additional latency whereas now we need to use sunshine which takes the frame after it's generated, re-encodes it, then transmits. 

Honestly, the whole "game in a different room from the PC" idea still is, and may always be, a pipedream. At least doing so easily and reliably. But if you want to drop fat stacks on hardware and are willing to introduce a whole slew of troubleshooting headaches, it's a neat lil project. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

21 hours ago, Menan said:

I also considered just running optical usb / display cables individually, but I don't think that is very realistic either. It's probably around 150 ft from where my server rack is to where my workstation is. I'd be hoping to achieve this with a single cable instead of having to run an entire bundle that distance.

The way I see it, you would only need two: one for your main monitor and one for a TB4 dock that connects everything else.

Still not sure about the reliable cable lengths for cables unless optical.