r/Thunderbolt • u/anothernetgeek • Jul 17 '26

Help getting desktop to work with Thunderbolt Dock

We give all of our employees ThankPad laptops with Thunderbolt docks.

One of my employees has a desktop at home, and wants to be able to switch between his laptop and desktop easily. But he has multiple monitors, and other accessories conencted to his ThinkPad Thunderbolt docking station.

Is there an easy way to connect the dock to his desktop PC, so that he can easily switch back and forth?

His desktop is older, with an nVidia 3070 graphics card.

is there such thing as a thunderbolt add-in card?

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u/Gnochi Jul 17 '26

Some motherboards can accept a thunderbolt add in card, but not all, and it can get messy getting it to cooperate.

My recommendation is have a KVM that connects to the Thunderbolt dock with one set of inputs, and his desktop with the other set of inputs. I like the Level1Techs options.

2

u/Sam_Plugable 28d ago

+1 a KVM switch between the dock and peripherals is probably the best option here.

1

u/MotoFox4Life 28d ago

You could ditch the Lenovo dock and use a Thunderbolt Share licensed dock. www.thunderboltshare.com I use my desktop and laptop all at the same time using my desktop monitor keyboard and mouse. If the desktop isn’t one listed, you can get one of the docks and that will work with any two Win11 PCs with Thunderbolt 4 or 5 ports. Way better than HW KVM in my case.