Brandon Whitehead's Tech Blog

Recap If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out part 1 of this story for more details:  https://tech.brandonwhitehead.com/2019/01/why-i-switched-to-using-2-desktop.html A quick summary of part 1 is that I switched to using 2 desktop computers because when I had everything on 1 computer I was without a usable computer for several weeks while troubleshooting. To prevent that from happening in the future I decided to pick up a secondary PC to use primarily for light duty tasks. Originally I picked up a Intel NUC8i5BEH with the hope that it would be the perfect fit for my needs. It was a good fit until I experienced several issues with using a USB device KVM/hardware switch which forced me to return the NUC. Part 2 Returning the NUC I ended up returning the NUC for a couple of reasons. Whatever USB controller they were using had a major compatibility issue with USB device switchers even when I purchased and tried utilizing a  native USB 2.0 accessor...

Introduction I never thought that I would want to have two Desktop PCs for myself. I had traditionally used one Desktop PC to "do it all". Afterall, that's one of the benefits of a PC to begin with. You can spec it for entertainment, work and other usages all within 1 device. Prior to acquiring 2 Desktop PCs, I had a Gaming PC, a personal laptop and a work laptop. I don't really count the personal laptop because it is about 8-9 years old (as of this article's publishing date) and not very usable anymore. For the work laptop, I try to strictly keep everything work related on that since the equipment is provided by my organization. I don't like to use it for personal things as much as I can. So realistically, I had one usable computer for home. My gaming/primary PC was used as my "swiss army knife" where it could game, host VMs and do more. As we all know though, a swiss army knife can only do so much without showcasing its shortcomings. That is unle...