My NEW Ultimate Desk & Setup Tour 2023!

What's up everyone? How's it going? So this past week I've torn up my entire studio. I have ripped out all of the wires and replaced most of them. I've added this gigantic monitor that I've been waiting on for months to arrive. I rebuilt my workstation not only for content creation, but also for software development, home labbing, gaming, Mac, Windows, Linux, you name it. I've organized my entire desk to try to keep it simple, minimal, and modern. And I also have my studio server rack in here. I

promise it's not casters on casters. I have new lighting, lots of arms, and I've even organized my workbench behind me too. I don't know if you can see that, that machine back there, but we'll get to that a little bit later. And so there might be something here for you, even if you're not a content creator. So let me walk you through all the changes I've been making over the last couple of weeks. So the first stop is the server rack in my office for my studio. This has my Mac right now that I r

acked in a previous video, and then above it is my Windows machine. Now this Windows/Linux dual boot machine soon will be converted to a rack mount case within here. I have a Sliger case and I'm gonna mount it in here and then my Windows, Linux, and Mac machine will all be in here. And I'll talk about this more in the future and do a deep dive probably on it when I get that machine mounted in there. But coming up over to here is my new desktop setup. Right here is my Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 57 in

ch dual 4k UHD. It's basically dual 4k monitors as if they took one 4k panel and another 4k panel and they fuse them together. And so that's why they call it a dual 4k monitor. It has 240 hertz refresh rate, one millisecond response times, but I'm not interested in that as much as I am some of the other features. But what I really wanted was this specific ratio. Now this ratio is important to me because I wanted to be able to have two windows side by side. So a 4k here and a 4k here. Right now t

his is in thirds, which still looks really good. So another cool thing about this is the 1000R curve. You can't really see that from here. Maybe I can get it from this side. So the 1000R curve. So that's a little bit more curved than most monitors, but this makes it feel more natural when the monitor is equidistant everywhere you look. So this point is almost the same distance as this point as this point. And some monitors you see the curve is less and so the monitor is further away. So I don't

have to squint so much when I'm looking at the corners. And this monitor is heavy. This monitor is like 40 pounds. And so how do you hold up a 40 pound monitor? Well, very carefully. Now it took me some time to find an arm that will hold up to 40 pounds, but this one will do it just fine. So you're probably wondering why did I get an arm? Well, for two reasons really. One, to free up some more space underneath and two, the legs on this monitor are so long they've come out to about here. But the

legs are just gigantic. They're almost not even worth putting on top of this desk. And so I found an arm where I can lift this up and then this also gives me some space underneath for this shelf too. So not only does it free up the desktop but it frees up the shelf as well. So if you saw, we were able to swing this out. Swing it out again. Let's go this way. Swing it out. I left one cable in there. So it's a little bit tight. I should get rid of it because I'm going to be talking up my cable man

agement here in a little bit. But if we look, we can see that this has RGB in the back. You have someone sitting behind you and you want to annoy them, you turn the RGB on. Like it's kind of cool. Looks cool from far away, but it does nothing for light back there. I have other lights. And so I mostly keep it off. I turned it on for this, but it's adjustable. Has RGB. Would I be fine without RGB? Absolutely yes. So let's close this back up. Push this back. It's kind of scary. I'm not gonna lie. I

t's kind of scary pushing this monitor around, but you know, I let it sit overnight. I put foam underneath it just in case it were going to fall. Didn't fall. And so I trust it now. Although I'm keeping these a little bit out of the way just in case. So if you noticed, I also have this monitor above and you might be wondering why the heck do you have a monitor up there when you have this huge monitor down here. It's for zoom meetings. It's for zoom meetings and recording my tutorials on YouTube.

I want to be able to record a screen in 4k rather than trying to capture, you know, a sliver of this screen and working around that. And I know you're probably saying, "Oh, that's Mac down there." Yeah, Absolutely it is, but I can actually toggle to my Windows machine back and forth and all of this hardware Will switch over to my Windows machine and switch back to my Mac and soon another laptop that'll be down here, too So this shelf system right here is really awesome. It's from Grove made and

that includes this desk pad this drawer and this shelf right here So this is solid maple and it just gives it a nice natural warm look speaking of warm I should probably switch to I don't know maybe a warmer color So if we look in here, it has a shelf system, so you could put all kinds of stuff in here and store stuff in here. I usually just store my phone in here and have it charge it while I'm working. And then there's a drawer system if you opt for one. So in my drawer, I just have a couple

of things. I mean, pen, 'cause every now and then I need to pen. My memory cards, you know, I drops, Carmex, nothing super fancy in here. A lens wipe and a USB stick, 'cause you never have enough of these. I even label this number one. It goes all the way up to four. But that's where I keep, you know, things I need really quickly. And then, you know, you have more storage underneath and down below here I have, you know, lights down there that are actually shining through here and I think it give

s it a nice glow. I know some people put, you know, monitor light shining down, but I kind of like this. I have my Phillips light that shine lights through here and shine them through the back. So I get some nice backlighting and then I get to light up this awesome desk pad. So this desk pad is fantastic too. It's nice and firm, but has some give. And that's because it's linoleum on top and then it is cork underneath. So it's really super solid and super nice. It's hard to describe this. It's re

ally soft. It's fantastic for my mouse and it has just the right amount of friction for me to move my super high DPI mouse. If I move it like this, I mean, I'm moving, you know, about 4K pixels. And so just having this desk pad that has this amount to give is just fantastic. I'm gonna try to keep things minimal. And so I don't have a lot stored back here. I actually have one back on my workbench that I'll show you here where I actually have stuff stored in. We'll see that here in a second. So hu

ge shout out to Grovemade for helping me match this to my existing desk. Really appreciate it. If you're looking for something like this, they gave me a code that you can use. It should be down in the description. And if you use the code Tech Note 10, you get 10% off. So you should check it out. So if you're a gamer or a streamer or anyone interested in tech, you know what this is. But this is my Stream Deck setup. This is my original Stream Deck that I've had for many, many years, how I got sta

rted in streaming. Huge shout out to Elgato for hooking me up with these two, which helped me replace my GoXLR, but this is the Stream Deck Plus. I can adjust these knobs, I have buttons and more controls, but I can control the volume of different applications while I'm streaming, which is huge. And then a WaveXLR to hook up to my microphone, which is also awesome. I just love this. When you see that, that means the microphone's muted and you just touch on the back. But this is hooked up to my m

icrophone, helps me stream on my live streams every week. You should totally check out my live streams. Let's get another color in here, what color? Oh, let's go back to where we were. See, I'm controlling all of this. My hue stuff, let's go back to where we were. So that Wave AxlR actually hooks up to my Rode mic and I have this arm. If you've seen me stream, you know this, but it's a little more out of the way this time. I have lots of arms back here, lots of arms to do lots of things. My came

ra's on an arm, which is pretty cool because I can kind of swing it around, show you different parts of the room, get different angles. I think that I'm going to figure out a way to put it up here, maybe on a track so I can get it in between the monitors and still have the angles and still have it be at eye level. So back here you might see another microphone and if I could squeeze it out, I'd jammed this in. No, not jammed it in, but eased it in ever so slightly. But this is a low profile micro

phone arm from Elgato, which is awesome. And this is perfect because I can get this close to me without it getting into the shot. Whereas this Rode microphone, yes, I wanted it in the shot, but this Rode shotgun mic, I don't want it in the shot. So I used to put it up above me and it would get picked up by the camera, plus not the greatest audio I found. Down here, it actually gets really good audio. And this low profile arm is super cool. it is like a transform. It's like go-go gadget microphon

e and I can just hide it back there. And you probably see these a lot too. These are my key lights when I stream so that's to kind of light up my face. That's another key light there to light up the other side. And I've had these for years. I actually have one back there too that we'll talk about. So one of the reasons why it took so long for me to kind of redo this office was because of the cable management or lack of cable management. You know, my studio had grown over time. I bought gear over

time, didn't really know what I wanted. And I would just put things in this little basket that I had underneath and I thought, hey, that's cable management. Turns out if you pile enough things in a basket, it turns into a rat's nest. Almost as bad as just letting it hang and dangle. So I ripped out everything and replaced everything. And I think I found a pretty good system for stuff. One thing is actually cool is is I can walk behind here now, kind of sorta, can't gain any more weight, but I c

an actually get behind my desk now. And I can actually probably show you some of this cable management. But this cable management now is, I think, pretty, pretty clean. Let me go down here. So the under desk test. So this is actually the messy side. But I found a good system for running all of my cables. like if I have clamps, they go through the clamps, then I have a basket, and if it's, you know, has extra slack, it goes in the basket, and then if it's a power strip, it goes into this little s

helf underneath here, and you can even see all my wires jumping over. This took a long time, but I think I found, like, the perfect system now, so it's very clean. Even my server rack, I mean, you can see a little bit, eh, kind of messy right there, that's because there's different lengths of slack. You know, I couldn't cut the wires myself, but I can pull my server rack all the way out to there and get behind it and service it without anything going wrong. And that was not the case before. I co

uldn't even get behind here. Now you can see this RGB. Oh, I didn't mention too that this, totally unnecessary. This mount also has RGB as if I needed more RGB in here. I do, I do. I do need more RGB, but it's actually kind of cool that it came with it. And so I'll keep it on. I'll keep it on. Keep it on for a little bit. Before I forget, another thing too is that maybe I went old man on it, but I labeled every single thing like every, well not power, but every single thing has a label on it tel

ling me what goes where or what it's from, either the source or the destination. You can see this over here on my little USB switch and you can see it on everything down here. So next time I'm down here wiggling stuff around or unplugging things, I can actually look and say, "Oh hey, this is for my Rode PodMic. Okay, don't unplug that. It must be this one over here." I know that these are dumb, probably simple tips. But for me, taking the time to actually come up with a system and make some rule

s and then apply those rules to what you do and then labeling everything. Man, this sounds like firewall rules, huh? Makes a firewall rules, I route everything accordingly and then document or label them. But that's kind of what I tried to do is come up with a system and make it work. And hopefully this system is scalable. As I add more stuff, I know wires go through clamps, plugs go in this basket. And if it has a power strip, it goes in here and you loop over to there. As you can see from the

front, I think that's pretty clean. I mean that that's all you see. Before I did this, I was embarrassed to show underneath here, which is important because you know this is a standing desk and it's adjustable. I'm probably hitting the weight limit of the standing desk, raising up all this stuff. But it was super important to me that things were able to move freely up and down without anything getting snagged or anything falling off. You know, it is a little wobbly. I'm not going to record while

I do it, but for the most part it's It's great. It's great for me. This is why I love Elgato stuff and I've been buying it for years. Turn up the workbench light. And here's my workbench. So you can see I have some things tucked under there. We'll get into that here in a second. This is my workbench where I work on things, where I film things, where I test a lot of things. And I test things that don't even get filmed. This is kind of the one maker space that I have where I can do everything I w

ant. Where I have all the light that I need and all the connectivity that I need. And so a lot of my top down shots are of this. and you'll notice this arm. Sometimes you might be able to see this in the background, this contraption, but that's an Elgato multi-mount arm. And that's the way that I'm able to get into some of these shots with the camera is with that. And so yeah, this is where I work on stuff. You can see I'm working on, you know, Zima board plus Zima blade stuff that should be com

ing out soon. And so down here, I'm just charging a lot of devices. I wish there was a better way to charge lots of devices but I just have an anchor charging adapter here with lots of devices plugged in that I need on the go. More devices charging, you know, my network switch down here that I can give all of these devices network as I'm testing as well as that device gives other devices in here, network connectivity. See what I have at the drawer here? Oh yeah, so yeah here's number two. So I k

now that number two, this one's kind of a free-for-all to put files on. Number one always has Ventoy on it. That's my system. One is Ventoy, two is free for all. But you know, things I need quick access to. I always need a Phillips screwdriver. I may or may not need a pen. Some of my cables that I want to plug into my switch really quick to test some of these devices. That's in there. And then Velcro, you can never have enough Velcro. Velcro is what made all of my cable management possible. Now

let's talk about the elephant in the room or the penguin in the room. So this right here is my wife's old iMac. It's a 2015 iMac. It's an Intel based one You know Apple still kind of supports Sonoma on there with security updates But I want to breathe some new life into it and tear it apart Max it out and then on top of that then throw Linux on it. So I don't know I might film it Maybe maybe not if that's something you want to see let me know But I'd like to give some new life into this so that

I have a monitor as I'm working on stuff to look up Documentation and do different things, you know, I do have a phone But it's always nice to have, you know, a big screen with keyboard and mouse that I can type in notes or update things as I'm working on some of these devices or projects. This thing, I get so many questions about this and people will always ask if I'll do a video on it. But this is kind of like I tried to make a Raspberry Pi piece of art. I probably did this like 10 years ago w

ith a Raspberry Pi. There used to be a 2 in there. I put a 3. Found these nice rainbow ribbon cables and then put in this Adafruit controller to this LED panel. And then I wrote a whole bunch of code that connects all of my notifications and will display them on this panel So YouTube subs used to do Twitter for all those before they disabled API access discord joins and things like that So it's it's pretty cool. I've added weather to it too and I added gifts and so it's just kind of something fu

n That's always on almost like a picture but a little more personal. So that's that Another thing I have in here is yeah, I have a TV up here It's kind of boring but this mobile workbench a lot of people ask about it. It's just a mobile workbench It's something you can find, you know, in people's garage. But I put it inside of here with some of the tools that I use. It's actually used for a lot of storage and storage, more storage, more storage, more storage, more storage, and more storage. So t

he reason I have this up here, one, it was for another workspace to work on top of things and possibly another area to film. But next it was for more storage. I don't have a lot of shelf space in here. So there are a lot of tools and parts, a lot of dongles that I need, you know, on a daily basis. Instead of hiding all of those dongles down in the basement, running down to get them every time I need them, I figured why not have a drawer full of dongles. Now I hope that redoing this office space

allows me to move a little bit quicker with less distractions and less chaos on my desk and my wires and everywhere else. And I hope that this lets me create content a little bit faster to get to you a little bit quicker. While I learned a ton over the last couple of weeks about cable management, ultra wide monitors, all kinds of gadgets you can attach to your desk. And I hope you learned something too. And remember, if you found anything in this video helpful, don't forget to like and subscribe

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