Desk setup / Battlestation Thread.
I am a pretty big fan of the PCMR Battle station posts where everyone shares their computers and desk setups. I have never seen one here so I figured I would start one!
Here is my desk, three 32" monitors (two facing the desk, one facing my living room on the back ). I primarily use my lower monitor and have background stuff on the upper (spotify, torrent client, youtube, podcasts, winamp, twitch, discord, etc etc). I have a bunch of old Xbox360 controllers and enjoy playing PC games on the couch on my rear monitor (as well as streaming obviously). The rear monitor also has a firestick and my only source of sound (other than my headset) is an Amazon Echo (which also controls my living room lights). The PC is a prebuilt from iBUYPOWER, it was my first time buying a prebuilt (I was hesitant to do so) and the only reason I did was because I was wanting to build a new rig right as crypto mining was driving up the cost of everything and I was able to get a great deal on this one. So far it has performed great. I still have two RAM slots open so I think that is the next thing I am gonna do.
I built my last computer in 2008 so I was way overdue for a new one and my S.O. has informed me I went a little overboard =)
9200 i7-8700K 6-Core 3.7 GHz | Liquid Cooled | Z370 Motherboard| GeForce GTX 1070 | 16GB DDR4| 1TB HDD | 240GB SSD |
Lets see what you guys have!
EDIT: sorry for the low picture quality, my cell phone is garbage.
EDIT2: forgot to include a screenshot
It's the same background on all three, but the taskbar is basic on the two secondary (and icons are only on the main). And if anyone was confused about the random monitor hanging off of the back of my desk this kinda shows it better.
Is your desktop screenshot in Colorado (or the Rockies)? Because that literally looks like it could be where I live (or nearby).
I am very envious of your audio set up. I worked as an IATSE sound and electrical technician throughout college (working full scale music and theatre venues). Sound was the one thing I wanted to do, but ran out of money and opted to just buy an Echo. Are you just an audiophile or is it work related?
ThinkPad? I See You're a Man of Culture As Well.
IDK if this counts, but here's one from a humanities guy:
What you see on my "desktop", left to right: A rather old, bulky laptop, my agenda, an a5 sized clipboard, books I'm reading, book(s) I've read. Behind the pens and stuff: books to be read, dictionaries for a translation that I'm trying to do, and my "longreads": books I read bit by bit over a long time. The laptop runs Debian Stable w/ XFCE4. I use 3 out of 4 workspaces regularly: one is entirely for Emacs, the next is for Firefox, and the last one is for reading: it has Zotero, another Emacs frame and the PDF(s) I'm reading open. I was considering a lighter laptop and a wall mounter vertical display for posture, but then my country had a currency crisis and I'll have to wait. The agenda is inspired by Bullet Journal, but does not really conform to each bit. I find it better than a pre-printed agenda because it's very personalised and months can be intermingled with notes, lists, etc., which is very useful. The A5 clipboard is my main writing tool if I'm not typing into Emacs. It frees you from the linear nature of a notebook, so I don't need to have one notebook per subject/thing etc., I just write on what's basically a stack of paper and later put what I just wrote on other stacks of paper. That blueish green thing is a plastic envelope, useful for carrying paper around in a bag without messing it up.
Ther "server wreck" is an RPi3 that I've put into a makeshift plastic chocolate box in order to protect it from dust. It's mission is to be the wireless connector to my printer/scanner, and scrape some websites for turning them into RSS feeds. Never had a problem in months, runs smoothly. IDK if I really need it though, but it's fun to have.
Hope that's not too boring for you guys here :)
That is exactly what the three books sitting on my desk are. Glad I am not the only one that does this.
Have you had much experience with Raspberry Pi? Its something I have always been interested in, but never actually taken the time to buy one and check that world out.
Is that The Dubliners, the Bible and the Nature of the Second Sex? Or have I written the names of my longreads (the Bible, Odysseia, Art Through the Ages) then inadvertently edited them out? Fun coincidence anyways! Especially the Bible is a fun read, it has so many stories and interesting bits, and reading it so many interesting details and references from other texts become clear. I think anybody seriously interested in Western literature should read at least the Homeric texts and the Bible.
WRT RPi, well, I can't say I've had too much experience specific to it. I've mostly used it as just another debian box I ssh into (I'm yet to hook it up to a monitor actually). It has been useful to me as a front-end for the printer (though I got the printer later than the RPi itself). Other than that, and hosting my RSS scrapers, I haven't really played with it. But I'm not actively programming since quite some time, if I did that, it would've been an interesting test bed for various stuff. I actually wanted to try building a multicomputer cluster with a bunch of them, but I have other things to focus on unrelated to computing, so that was one interesting plan that could've taught me how to administer a big computer center. I don't have an interest in robotics, if you do, many people use an RPi as a brain for robotics projects.
I like how your battlestation is "real", not a super cliche one with triangular lights and a small plant on the desk. And it's cool that the fishtank is tall. Are those fish black neon tetra?
Yea, I have always gamed on a shitty laptop or older desktop so when I decided to build a "battlestation" I wanted to go all out. Clearly I need more RGB glowy stuff though...
I have a couple Mollies and some mini shark things that I do not remember the name of the name of (and a sucker and a few neon snails). I just ordered a few more plants for it, one of the reasons I have a tall tank is so I can have more live plants and have the tank be as sustainable as possible. This is the best fish picture I can get with my phone.
I often zone out watching the fish when I am gaming, they make amazing pregame lobby distractions. =)
EDIT: the name of the sharks are "roseline sharks (Sahyadria denisonii)", which I just found out (via googlefu) that they are actually an endangered species sooooo it's kinda weird my local fish store carries them.
Bit late, but here's mine.
Computer: Pixelbook (256)
Monitor: LG25UM57
Headphones: Phillips SHP9500s
Headphone Stand: Blue Yeti
Simple set-up, just finished replacing my Windows desktop with it, and it's going great. Now whenever I got to go somewhere, I just unplug my Pixelbook from my monitor, and everything comes with me. Even got myself to clean up my desk a bit.
So, is the Pixelbook just running an updated version of Chrome OS? or is it something entirely different?
Runs the same Chrome OS as other Chromebooks (with the addition of the Google Assistant), but Chrome OS has been getting a lot more functional lately.
This year we got Crostini, which allows Linux applications to be run natively (and allows me to finally free myself of Windows), last year we got Android apps, and (probably early next year) we'll soon be getting "Alt OS" which will allow us to dual-boot into other operating systems.
There are are also unconfirmed rumors of Adobe software being built for Chrome OS, that (if true) we should be hearing more about in the coming months. Very exciting stuff.
Wow, I had a first gen chromebook back when you could pick a functional one up for like $100. It was a great little computer for internet browsing and the low price tag gave me the confidence to take it everywhere with me with very little caution. But, for anything other than browsing the thing was useless.
Sounds like they have come a long way since then, good to hear.
I love seeing other people's battlestations too! :)
My current setup:
https://i.imgur.com/1Zbw3rp.jpg
My new Mini-ITX Gaming PC Build topic (with lots of pics) from a few months ago:
https://tildes.net/~comp/3k4/my_new_mini_itx_gaming_pc_build
I generally use the left monitor for web-browsing and reference material while working, the top monitor for media playing (youtube, spotify, etc), the right monitor for communications (discord, steam, slack, etc) and the ultra-wide center monitor for actual work (and gaming). I am also a huge PC gamer as well (945 games on Steam), hence the 360 controller in my pic too. I also have a 47" TV hooked up as a 5th monitor to the left of that pic so I can PC game on my couch and an HTC Vive headset mounted to the wall just to the left of that pic as well.
I went back and forward between lots of smaller monitors and a couple of huge ones for a long time. I think your setup is pretty similar to what I would have ended up with if I had gone with a panoramic setup. Ultimately I didn't think I would utilize a third enough, so I went big (plus I got a sweet deal from Amazon Prime for buying multiples).
Hmmmm, maybe I do need more monitors.
My 360 has been in storage in the back of my closet for a few years now. I was really excited when I realised I could utilized all the old controllers I had just lying around. Now if only I could transfer some of the 80+ 360 game licenses over to PC that are also in that box.
o_O
I broke 200 this Summer and I was really proud of that, my steam account is like a decade old too.
Holy cow, I got nothing on your numbers.
But I already have a monitor hanging off the back of my desk, hm, I bet I could fit one more somewhere.
Every time I get another new monitor that is exactly what immediately goes through my brain. I am 100% in agreement with @spit-evil-olive-tips on the ideal number of monitors; You can never have too many. ;)
Yeah mine is up there too. I got my "Years of Service" badge on Steam upgraded to 14 in July... "Member since 29 July, 2004." I still remember when Steam was a gross shade of green. :P
I liked the olive drab look, I get super nostalgic every time I come across screenshots of it.
I recognize that video but I can't remember what it's called. Care to share?
Aurora live at Indie88. :)
I <3 Aurora and Indie88... she's one of my favorite artists and it's my favorite radio station here in Toronto.
Thanks!
Fairly basic setup -- https://i.imgur.com/jvMZYQC.jpg
The VESA mounted laptop tray was a godsend for my posture. The left monitor is connected to a little NUC that's mounted to the side of my desk. I control it with an HP Media Center remote or with a cursor via Synergy.
The desk is a MALM occasional table that Ikea sold years ago. Its only 14" deep, so the mounts are necessary. On the rear side I'm using a lot of velcro wraps to manage the cables.
I love how clean, simple, and elegant this setup is.
Its nowhere near enough for my personal needs, but damn do I wish my setup was that clean.
Damn, I really like the ambient lighting. Is is static or can you change it? I wonder if something like that would work with Alexa.
Yea i really need to raise my lower monitor up a bit, my posture is crap. I never would have thought of a VESA stand for a laptop, it looks really great.
I actually used to have one of those in the hallway of my old house. Aren't they only like a foot and a half wide?
My desk is literally a small dining room table that I found at a thrift store, refinished and drilled out holes for the VESA tower. Basically everything tech in my whole house is on it so I kinda had to go big.
the lighting is only that warm, yellow-y light. Its just strip lights I got off of fasttech for $15 or something.
The MALM is about 72" wide -- pretty decent. I raised it up using some short legs and some wood, since I'm taller.
My old 'desk' was my kitchen table. I drilled a hole in the leaf and put in a plastic grommet. I have cable management underneath, so I can work by day and put everything away without having to unplug everything. Pretty handy for its time.
For the lights, go with the Philips HUE. You can control them with IFTTT and Alexa (I believe) -- definitely the Google stuff.
Here's my desk and my keyboard.
I recently switched to macOS, so here's my new desktop. Any apps I should install? I've got Magnet and Vanilla already.
I'm looking to upgrade to a 27" 4k monitor at some point, but I'm pretty happy with my current 25" 1440p Dell.
I recently acquired a Macbok and the brew repo has been a god send.
Here's my 'desktop', it's fairly boring and not much to look at. https://vgy.me/rTgwMp.png
I'm currently using a (god awful) FX 8350@4.6GHz, GTX 1060, some budget 970 motherboard that barely holds the 4.6GHz clock, and some very good 16GB DDR3 (2666MHz CL12 box spec) which I can't take advantage of because of the FX and it's terrible IMC.
I'm looking into buying a R5 2600, MSI X370 Gaming Plus (it's the cheapest X370 board in my country, cheaper than even B450 boards) and 16GB DDR4.
There's also the option of buying a Huanan X79/E5-1650 v2 combo but AliExpress takes long to arrive and I've heard mixed things about the Huanan board, I also don't want to lock myself into a dead platform.
What desktop environment is that? And how did you configure it to look like that?
Looks like out of the box Solus/Budgie with transparency toggled on the task bar. Looks great—my favourite DE for sure.
Overview of my home setup. Not a pure battlestation, but also a hobby area with lots of storage for 3D printing and other stuff. Two MALM desks and a MALM drawer that have been hacked together quite a bit to include integrated LED lighting and other goodies.
Actual computer station. My uncle had a 40" TV he was getting rid of about 5 years ago, and even after it broke I knew I could never go back. It's my main gaming screen for both my PC and an XBox One/PS4, which are stowed away in the lower right. The two 22" monitors on the right are primarily for Netflix or movies, reddit and chats, reference material, and stuff like that.
It's a bit of a mess and not very "clean," but its my little corner of nerd-vana.
My work desk isn't much better. Actually its worse. Definitely worse.
This is basically how I got hooked on 32" monitors. I have gotten a lot of flack from friends for having such big monitors, but on my last computer set up a friend was giving away an old 32" TV so I just used it as the monitor. I will never be able to have anything smaller now, there really is no going back once you get used to having so much space.
You sir, have great taste in keyboards =)
Long term goal for me would be to move my two 32" up top on my stack and have a 4k curved ultra wide on bottom. I am waiting till their quality and price improves.
Also, what is the source of that background? I get very Tolkien vibes from it.
https://imgur.com/a/E0JN8
There is mine, but that's a little old, I have a 16:9 monitor on top now and an old 16:9 (old laptop) monitor on the left side now. Everything else is the same.
My wifes computer is next to mine, to the right.
Nice fsociety mask. I haven't watched the new season yet. In your opinion is it as good as the previous ones? I felt S2 jumped the shark a little bit so I have been holding off on S3 because of that.
Season 3 is definitely better than Season 2. It introduces several new characters, two of which are now my favorites in the series! I highly recommend giving it a watch.
Excellent, that's awesome to hear! Thanks. I will check it out after I finish watching the new season of Westworld. :)
Re the DBUS question:
I'm not entirely sure, but it looks like all that's in there is just references to find the DBUS address for the session. It's probably being set up by your session manager (SDDM or whatever), so you may be able to configure it there or start
dbus-launchon login yourself (via xinitrc or something) with the appropriate configuration/env vars.Looking at the contents of
.dbuson my system, there's a file for each display containing something like:My assumption is that, since you're not using a session manager, some process or library is looking for a session bus, not finding it, and automatically creating one before dropping those files into
.dbusfor the next program to find.If you manually create a session in
.xinitrcor similar (viadbus-launch), setting theDBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESSenvironment variable, then programs should be able to find the bus that way and won't need.dbusat all.I don't have more time to investigate right now, but I'd suggest looking at the man pages for
dbus-launch, anddbus-run-session. Basically, it should be possible to manually set up the DBUS session bus and make it available to programs in your session via those environment variables, and cut out whatever is currently doing that set up for you automatically (and using the.dbusdirectory).Man, I love that ThinkPads have changed very little in 20 years. Hmm, maybe I need a new laptop.
I'm a huge fan of your dedication to minimalism! What distribution are you running?
Oh wow, I'm impressed! You sound like you need to try installing and running an LFS system without ever leaving the TTY. I think you'll love it! ;)
Raised Desk
Lowered Desk
Side View
Desk is a 44"(w) x 24"(d) standing desk from Uplift. It has casters to easily move the whole thing out of the guest room while guests are there.
Happy to do a list of other parts and stuff if anyone is interested.
I don't have a pic but here's my spec back in Aug:
Total cost around $900. It's the first PC build in my life and I totally love it.
Main computer desk
Lab desk w/ lab computer (opposite side of the room).
Main desktop screenshot
Main desktop specs:
i9-11900K liquid cooled
64GB RAM
500GB SSD (Samsung 980 Pro NVMe)
18TB Seagate storage drive (and innumerable external drives plugged in as needed)
NVIDIA RTX A2000 quad-DP
Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon / Kernel 5.15.0-86-generic
My main computer desk and my lab bench are the primary features of my home office. All the work I do at home I do there. Not quite fit into the picture of my computer desk are the printers: a standard Samsung laser printer and a Zebra GX430t thermal label printer for shipping for my eBay business.
For a long time I stuck with 1 monitor, then at some point I tried 2 and it worked well for me, having additional display space. About a year ago or so I added a third and have since come to the conclusion that no matter how much display real estate I have I can find a use for it all.
The lab computer is nothing impressive, just a HP Elitedesk small form factor computer. I didn't really need a lot of horsepower for the lab desktop, just something to display schematics or watch a repair video on YouTube. The video output from the microscope (when I mount my camera on it) I just plug directly into the display.
You neglected to mention the really good cats in both pics. V pleasant surprise.
They are great. The desk cat is Roxie and Mr. sleeps-on-my-toolbag is Floof.
Floof is a genius, and an asshole, and incredibly, unfairly soft.
Main Desk
Work M1 MBP on the left, Personal M2 MBP on the right. Desk is actually 2m long but it's a nightmare to get all of that in one shot.
Workshop desk
Bonus round: home server
This one is a NUC hackintosh media server with a bunch of hard drives crammed in an old Macintosh IIci case with reasonably matching peripherals. Running macOS for the memes. Great for actually watching SD TV on too, so I keep this one right next to main TV.
Awesome! I love the retro-mac setup of your media server. I also appreciate seeing other electronics nerds out there.
I'm no big enthusiast in this particular thing, I had i5 750 until 2022 when I upgraded (for free) to i5-3470 and got 16GB of RAM (previously 8).
I have beautiful aluminium Lian-Li HTPC case that I plan on keeping, so I'm limited by TDP of CPU somewhat (<100W is ok) and height of GPU, so I have GTX 1650. Thanks god, this actually saves me a lot of money because I can't put newer stuff in :-D
I have 1080p 60Hz IPS LCD that I got for free (previously had TN panel I bought myself with i5 750 back in the day). I don't have speaers connected to my PC as it is in our living room and I don't want to bother family members. The PC is connected to our TV though - Panasonic 42" plasma from 2011. I have some chinese-made local eshop mechanical keyboard with backlight and Cherry Red switches, which is actually pretty good for the price (standard is like 80€, I got it in sale for 50). I have Logitech Anywhere MX3 mouse because I wanted BT capable mouse of believable quality and portale one because... I bought Steam Deck.
So my gaming shifted to Steam Deck with only a few games on my desktop really (like RTS and some shooters). When Steam Deck Dock (what a name!) dropped in pice to 80€ recently, I went for it. I work from home and use my desktop as a "background noise" source, playing videos or music into he headphones and other stuff while working on employers notebook. Since my desktop needs much more power than Steam Deck, I wanted to use Steam Deck for this and that's where, at last, an image of my setup comes in.
So the setup: PC is across the room connected to this corner via HDMI (into LCD) and USB3 extension cable, both of them are wired through the wall (what do you call the plastic in wall tubing in english? conduit?). The USB3 is then connectedinto the HUB that is double-sided taped on the side of the LCD. On the top behind the LCD is double-sided taped USB3 switch that switches the HUB between extension (thus PC) and Steam Deck (Steam Deck is also connected to LCD). So by one click of a button the whole HUB which has keyboard, mouse and USB soundcard connected gets switched from onemcine to another depending on what I want to use.
There are some decorations as you can see - LEGO Saurn V rocket, stirling engine, Metal earth Millenium Falcon, hand painted plaster mold of R2D2 (not really visible) and that strange glass tube thermometer with floating glass "bubbles" that tell how many degrees it is. There is also small LEGO helicopter, LTT waterbottle (LTTstore.com) and I also hae one 20cm 5V Noctua fan that I slapped li-ion batteries and DIY PWM controller on and use it as portable fan in the summer. I also have TUF H3 (or whatever) headset there and some hefty powerbank for my Steam Deck.
EDIT: I run Gentoo Linux on desktop and I use Arch, btw, on Steam Deck (aka Steam OS).
Saw this got bumped and decided to contribute.
This is my Thunderbolt 4 enabled setup with my laptop driving a 5120x1440 32:9 ultra wide display via a dock at full resolution and 48-120 Hz dynamic refresh rate:
Highlights:
https://imgur.com/a/OZVIsn4
To the average Joe, pretty neat looking gaming rig.
To someone more seasoned, that case and cooler are life support systems for my i7 920. 24 gigs of Tri channel ram, 256 SSD, 512 platter and a 1tb WD usb platter external. The graphics are handled by a 960 for now. I got the machine the motherboard was first installed in when I was working for Nerdcorps, so if you're a fan of Slugterra or the League of Super Evil, or even Monster High, this rig probably had a hand in what you saw. Now it heats my room while I play No Man's Sky