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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Some notes on PCIe based KVM over IP and splitting video (as modern KVM over IP do not seem to do passthrough) for remote out-of-band management

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/13

The notes are based on the NanoKVM PCIe as that is what I wanted to set-up on a Windows 11 compatible PC that could be remotely managed for someone not savvy enough to do that themselves. They had an old Supermicro based PC with IPMI which kind of does IPKVM when using the embedded video hardware, but back when I wrote this early 2025 – the year Windows 10 would become end-of-life – it was:

  • a nightmare to figure out which Supermicro mainboards were Windows 11 compatible
  • remote IPMI tooling ¹ was a pain to get working (the most important one is IPMIView which requires Java and even with Java installed would have issues connecting to various generations of IPMI)
  • newer KVM tooling has way better
    • user experience than classic ones like IPMI and iDRAC
    • features like for instance WireGuard support which makes for way less network configuration
    • open source software (for at least NanoKVM I mention here, but also for Pi-KVM which has the drawback of also requiring a Raspberry Pi)

Since none of the modern remote KVM hardware tooling seems to be able to do passthrough video, the solution I researched for was to split the outgoing video signal (either Displayport or HDMI), then optionally convert Displayport to HDMI and finally route that HDMI into the remote KVM hardware.

Links

The NanoKVM-PCIe

Order link over here: [Wayback/Archive] Sipeed NanoKVM IP-KVM Mini Remote Control Operations Maintenance Server, 1TOPS NPU 1GHz C906 RISC-V Linux Single Board Computer, with HDMI 100M Network Connection: Amazon.de: Computer & Accessories

Splitters and converters

Based on [Wayback/Archive] Issue with 3440 x 1440 · Issue #339 · sipeed/NanoKVM · GitHub (the issue got fixed in version 2.2.1) and [Wayback/Archive] Checking Out The Teensy Tiny RISC-V NanoKVM! – YouTube (at 4:33)

Many splitters exist for HDMI, this is the one from the above video:

For DisplayPort you need a converter too; these even come in cable form.

The above images from:

Potential systems

All of these have low-profile PCIe slots, so for cable guidance you need to modify a low-profile PC slot bracket. For that, you can either buy metal ones, or 3D print one as these are far less sharp when you modify them:

The systems

Via

All because of a reaction to my request

and an earlier tweet:

Queries

¹ IPMI tooling

If you ever need the IPMIView part f the [Wayback/Archive] Supermicro IPMI Utilities | Supermicro Server Management Utilities | Supermicro, then you can get them via:

[Wayback/Archive] www.supermicro.com – /wdl/utility/

The above links thanks to [Wayback/Archive] supermicro IPMIview software download : supermicro.

--jeroen

[Wayback/Archive] NanoKVM PCIe Test/Review/Whatever – YouTube

[Wayback/Archive] Checking Out The Teensy Tiny RISC-V NanoKVM! – YouTube

[Wayback/Archive] Disassemble Dell OptiPlex 7060 5060 & 3060 – YouTube

[Wayback/Archive] Dell Optiplex 7060 SFF Motherboard Replacement – YouTube

[Wayback/Archive] Lenovo desktop V530 Unboxing, Setup and SSD Upgrade | Lenovo V530-15ICB unboxing – YouTube

 

This entry was posted on 2026/03/13 at 18:00 and is filed under Displays, Hardware, IPMI, KVM keyboard/video/mouse, Power User, SuperMicro, Windows, Windows 11. Tagged: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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