Using a keyboard without numpad

I recently switched to a keyboard that doesn't have a numpad and I'm a bit confused about how I'm gonna make it work properly with blender. I know there's the "Emulate numpad" option but that doesn't really work for me. For example, if I have that enabled I can't use 1, 2, and 3 to switch between vertices, edges and faces in edit mode. Does anyone know if there is any solution to this?