What's the best 4K KVM for 2018 MBP's back to late 2012 Mac mini's?

I was previously using an IOgear GCS1794 (4-port, HDMI, USB, and 3.5mm analog audio in/out) which worked well because it supported 1920x1200@60Hz and that was largely adequate 5 years ago.


Now I have a MBP 2018 15" w/ retina & Touch Bar that can do 4K @60Hz (over DisplayPort) or 4K @30Hz over HDMI 1.4.


My KVM switch can't handle these new resolutions. All of my monitors will do HDMI+DisplayPort or DVI+HDMI, so I can easily find cables or dongles to convert to a common format (HDMI or DisplayPort).


DisplayPort apparently doesn't do EDID properly, so the KVM can't "cache" the EDID block and advertise it back to hosts that are booting so they can dimension their desktops appropriately when the KVM isn't selected to the booting host (especially a problem if you're booting all of your hosts together, unattended, such as after a power outage).


Most HDMI switches handle EDID properly, but are bandwidth limited to 4K @30Hz, not 60Hz.


Seems if I want the higher refresh rate then I'll either need to make sure I always boot my computers one at a time (sometimes difficult to do), or else install SwitchResX and nail up the display parameter (width, height, refresh rate, etc).


My other computers are a late-2012 Mac mini which has Mini DisplayPort (Thunderbolt 2) and HDMI, and a mid-2015 MBP 2015 w/ Retina on a LandingZone docking station that has Mini DisplayPort and HDMI output as well.


The 2015 MBP 15" can only do 4K @60Hz over the DP, or 4K @30Hz.


The 2012 Mac mini seems limited to 2560x1600 (unclear what refresh rates) on HDMI and Mini DisplayPort.


What do other people do?

MacBook Pro w/ Touch Bar (2018 or later)

Posted on Feb 5, 2019 5:51 PM

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Mar 5, 2019 11:57 AM in response to PhilipBZ

Here's an update: I ended up getting a TEsmart 4K 4-port KVM.


I paid about $120 for it, plus another $10 for a 2nd pair of cables.


It seems to work well enough, just glitching with one of my machines: I have a late-2012 Mac mini (max resolution 2560x1600 @60Hz) and I put a StarTech USB32HD4K USB 3.0 external 4K @30Hz HDMI DisplayLink adapter. The video works well (modulo not having support for font scaling) but the audio is extremely glitchy.


DisplayLink (the company making the chipset in the StarTech dongle) claims that all of the audio portion of the HDMI driver is done by Apple, and hence they can't fix the glitch audio.


With other Macs with built-in 4K HDMI video, the audio seems to work great.


I ended up not needing SwitchResX, either.

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What's the best 4K KVM for 2018 MBP's back to late 2012 Mac mini's?

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