Ah yes, Herman Miller, the brand that gives your posterior a taste of luxury. If long-term ergonomic bliss is your goal, a Herman Miller chair is the way to go, or so they say. That, or a Steelcase one, of which I am the incredibly lucky owner. But when it comes to desks, the premium ergo market has been a bit more diverse. Until now, that is, because Herman Miller has just announced its first-ever gaming desk.

It's called the Coyl, a $1,475 electronic sitting-standing desk, and interestingly Herman Miller markets it specifically as a 'gaming desk'. That's presumably thanks to its feature set which seems to include, for instance, a full-length cable tray with integrated power strip, a headset hook, and a low-rise pegboard—sorry, a "modular perforated shroud"—at the back.

It comes in four finishes: ash, walnut, 'ultra black', and 'studio white'. I know premium desks are often your standard luxury wooden affair, but having a black and a white option is great for PC gamers who might want something that matches their setup a little better. I'm partial to walnut, though, as I love my own walnut Grovemade desk, even if I do have to be a little more careful with it given how soft that kind of wood is.

I'm particularly jealous of the 'felt-lined magnetic door' that covers up the cables in the cable tray. The system on my Grovemade is neat—it slides up and down with a click-lock mechanism—but the simplicity of felt and magnet would, I think, make for a much simpler, more effective, and still elegant solution.

Even the sit-stand control has its Herman Miller quality stamp, because whereas usually you'd control such mechanisms with a physical or touch button, here there's a "precision rotary dial", ie a knob that gives tactile feedback.

Aesthetically it looks gorgeous, of course, too, which is primarily thanks to the cable and felt cover combo. The power strip is hooked up to a thick, coiled, red cable that shoots down next to the left leg, and the pull-hoops on the fabric cover are the same red, too. It's just the right amount of bright accent, to my eyes at least.

So, plenty to look forward to if you're in the market for a luxury and very expensive gaming desk. It's not without its competition, though, as Lian Li has recently announced its DK-07 wood, another premium offering that happens to include a whole glass paneled cavity inside the desk to house your PC. Our very own Dave loves the previous DK-04F which also had a conveniently PC-sized and glass-covered cavity.

I reckon the two are different enough for them to keep in their own lanes and have their own target markets, though. Which is useful, because they both cost about the same, with the DK-07 coming in very slightly cheaper at $1,400.

The Secretlab Magnus Evo certainly lives up to its name, taking its signature sit-standing desk and tweaking some of its biggest friction points for a more refined, evolved experience over its predecessor.

If you're already all decked out with the original Magnus Pro, there's admittedly not much different here to convince you to jump ship. But if, like me, the Evo is your first foray into Secretlab's world of desks, it's a worthy investment—if you can stomach its hefty price tag.

When the Secretlab Magnus Evo first arrived, the biggest thing that stuck out to me was just how heavy the thing was. I opted for the 1.5 m desk length for my small apartment—though it also comes in the slightly larger 1.7 m length option—and with a metal frame containing motor work in the legs, my delivery tracking informed me that the box came in at a whopping 63 kg.

Thankfully I had the foresight to call a friend for help with assembly, and I would definitely recommend two people to put the Magnus Evo together. The parts are heavy, and the desk has to be assembled upside down before lifted upright. The actual process of putting the desk together was simple—I'd consider myself to be a little illiterate in the instruction manual department, but I had the Magnus Evo up and ready to go in around an hour.

The assembly is where the differences from the Magnus Pro start to shine. For one, the Magnus Evo allows you to run the power cable through either leg of the desk, where the Pro was only set up to run it through the left. The Magnus Evo is still set to the left by default—and the leg I opted to use as it was closer to my desired outlets—requiring a little extra work to swap it over to the right leg. But having the option at all is a nice change, making it far more convenient to set it up according to your layout.

The cable management has moved, too. It's now under the desk in a drop-down tray which snaps up to attach thanks to some powerful magnet work. They're strong, but without taking a whole lot of strength on my part to unhinge it and stuff my cables inside. I'm currently running a six-socket extension in the tray with a little bit of extra space, though I wouldn't have complained if the tray had been a touch wider. It makes the entire setup look deliciously clean, though, even with my cable management skills being a little lacklustre.

It's not just the cable tray where Secretlab has gone ham on magnets, either. The entire back panel of the desk is a magnetic zone, as well as the two front corners. It's sleek, both functionally and fashionably—the glossy magnetic trim stands out against the rest of the desk's matte black look, and there's plenty of room to stick all manner of magnetised additions to the desk. It's here where Secretlab really wants you to make full use of its accessories range—magnetic headphone hangers ($35), and magnetic cable management anchors and sheaths ($55 for a bundle).

In fact, I couldn't help but feel like the Magnus Evo wasn't truly complete without dipping into Secretlab's pricey add-ons. Maybe that's a consequence of swapping out from my feature-heavy IKEA Fredde desk, but I fear I would have liked the Magnus Evo considerably less without the addition of the PC mount ($99) or the dual monitor arm mount ($249) to keep the setup looking tidy and work with my day-to-day needs.

It can quickly rack up the price tag on what is already quite an expensive desk. The Magnus Evo starts from $749, with add-ons easily taking the overall cost to over $1000 if you want the full shebang. There is a delightfully premium feel to everything to make up for it, though. It's sleek, stylish, minimalist, and functional all in one.

Nothing ever feels too flimsy—I do experience a little bit of wobble while working standing up with the desk set to around a 101 cm height, but it's not been enough to be a considerable bother to me.

Even when raised all the way to its maximum height of 117 cm, I experienced minimal shakiness both vertically and horizontally. I was able to type without the monitor wobbling around too much, as well as make full use of the standing function to play some arcade rhythm games that require some heavy rapping on a large controller, which really put the desk's stability to the test.

The whole thing is whisper-quiet, too. The first time I played around with the height adjustment I hadn't even clocked the noise coming from the motors. It is, of course, noisier coming up than it is coming down, but the difference is so negligible it's going to be impossible to cause a nuisance to any nearby members of your household. There's also obstacle detection, something I accidentally discovered when leaving my chair tucked in while bringing the height down.

While the whole thing does feel premium, I do take a slight issue with the desk's metal top. Despite careful use, I discovered a handful of scratches just a few days into using the Magnus Evo. With how often I use my desk for both work and gaming, I would have expected a little more durability from its surface. I wasn't even working for a good duration of my time reviewing the desk, which made me even more surprised how quickly scratches had surfaced.

It does mean a more delicate hand is required compared to other desks, which doesn't gel well with my usual day-to-day use. I'll likely get a larger mouse mat in the future to cover it up and further protect myself, but I just wish I didn't have to face that issue at all.

Despite my small issues, I can't help but be totally enamoured with how well the Magnus Evo straddles the line of functional and fashionable. Not only is it utterly gorgeous to look at, but the cable management is a dream. I love the fact that the desk comes with an integrated power supply, too, which massively minimises how many cables are travelling around cluttering up my space.

I wasn't sure how googly-eyed I'd go for a desk, but seamless sit-standing and considerably less messy cablework have already massively improved both my working and gaming experience. If you can look beyond a high price tag and are looking to up your desk game, the Secretlab Magnus Evo is a top contender.

A good desk can do anything. Well, not everything, but it can hold up a PC, a monitor or two, and give you somewhere to pop your peripherals. In the case of the Grovemade desk, it does all that, while adding a stylish drawer with built-in cable management, and looks effortlessly gorgeous to boot.

That's why we have crowned it the best luxury gaming desk right now. Going for $2,500 to $3,200 (depending on whether you want solid timber or plywood), it's a desk that sports a price tag bigger than a beefy RTX 5080 PC's, so you may be wondering why we like it so much.

Well, let's start with the look. The Walnut model we got our fingers (and gaming PC) on is absolutely gorgeous. Our Jacob said they didn't just feel in awe when they first saw it, but got that feeling for months—it's just that nice.

As well as this, the motor that swaps it from standing to seated is super smooth and can be fixed on the side in full view or under the drawer, tucked away.

Oh yeah, did I mention the drawer? It smoothly slides out from the wooden frame and gets larger the further you get in, which means it feels almost hidden at the front of the desk. It's also well segmented to fit in all kinds of devices, and comes with holes at the back for smart cable management.

The back of the table houses a six-outlet surge protector, which should be enough to power up your gaming rig, too. The only problem we have with its cable management is that the holes aren't super big, so don't expect to get chunky wires through there.

You'd also struggle to get an 18-inch laptop in the drawer, in case you want to set it up like a USB hub to feed out to a monitor on the desk. Luckily, the desk itself is super sturdy, and you will have no problem throwing a PC and a couple of monitors on it.

For the price this little beauty goes for, it has a lot to live up to, but it's hard to argue it doesn't justify its cost (should you have that kind of money for a gaming desk).

If the Grovemade is a bit too rich for your blood (same), well, our pick for the best gaming desk may be more up your alley. The Secretlab Magnus Pro XL isn't exactly cheap at $950, but it's a bit of a beast, being super sturdy with tidy cable management, a clean aesthetic, and a whole host of great accessories.

The best budget gaming desk right now is the Ikea Utespelare, with the Swedish company punching far above its weight. You can read our full picks for the best gaming desk below.

The quick list

The best gaming desk

I didn't expect the sparkle to last quite so long with this desk, but it has. I'm not talking about a physical sparkle, of course, I mean that 'freshly impressed with new furniture' feeling. I've been using the Grovemade standing desk system—AKA the Grovemade desk—for a few months now, and I'm still a little in awe of it when I enter my office each morning.

But that's par for the course with a luxury desk like this: it's supposed to engender that reaction. Lush, solid walnut with very deliberately curved and angled edges isn't meant to go unappreciated.

Saying that, I'd also be doing the desk a disservice if I said it was just a luxury walnut/oak/maple desk. In addition to this, it has a sitting-standing motor with two memory positions, and perhaps more importantly, it's managed to cram in a decent amount of storage and cable management.

That's thanks to the huge hidden underside drawer, plus the long power supply, extension socket, and cable management area that's also well-hidden by a wooden panel that slides up and down. These two additions are what really set the Grovemade desk apart from other expensive luxury desks.

The idea is to have a desk that doesn't sacrifice a minimalist and decluttered look, but still recognises that we exist in a device-filled and still partially wired world. If you want minimalism, you're going to need places to store your devices, and if you're using devices, you're probably going to need to use cables at least some of the time. This desk is designed to straddle that boundary, and I think it does so very well.

These storage and cable management needs are especially acute for PC gamers, which is why many of the best gaming desks have cable management zones which are practical but also very visible, and sometimes storage solutions such as pegboards. Grovemade has tried to give us the benefits of these solutions without so much eyesore, in keeping with the price tag.

And therein is the kicker. If all this sounds too good to be true, well, it is too good to be true if you're on any semblance of a moderate budget. For the full, solid wood deal, you're looking at $3,200 without a discount. You can get a plywood version for $2,500 (again without discount), but when you're already in the thousands, I reckon it's worth it to spend a few hundred extra for solid wood. If you're committed to getting a luxury piece of furniture, you don't want to stop halfway.

That's an astronomically high price tag for most people, myself included, but for the kind of product it is, and the quality of the materials it uses, it makes sense. Big desks made of just two or three joined slabs of solid oak, maple, or walnut—those are your options—will likely run you above $2,000, sometimes much higher. Throw in the sit-stand functionality and the big, hidden drawer, and the price tag makes sense. It's not cheap, but it's not your average desk.

The finishing touches are lovely, too. I've already mentioned the slightly curved slant to the edges, but I'd also like to touch upon the drawer's sliding mechanism. The sides are free-hanging, which looks great, and the sliding mechanism consists of two runner strips on the underside of the desk, which the drawer latches onto along the two wooden compartment separator strips.

This is apparently inspired by the design of CNC machines, and it is incredibly smooth to open and close. It does mean you don't get to hang anything off the side, though, including mic arms and the like.

A final finishing touch I like is the placement of the sit/stand control panel. When you build the desk, you can choose whether to place it closer to the edge so it's more visible, or further back underneath the drawer so you can't see it. I chose the latter, to fit in with the minimalist theme, and I'm glad I did, as it's great to just double-tap an unseen button to move it to standing position. It's easy to unscrew it and put it in the other spot, too, if you change your mind.

Then we come to cable management, and here we've certainly got more than most desks, but it's not perfect. The main bulk of your cable management is intended to be done behind the slide-down panel underneath the desk and behind the drawer, in the long channel where the sit/stand power supply and extension sockets sit.

In addition to this channel for cables and plugs, you get a gap that's as wide as a USB-A connector running across the desk, which looks quite smart. The idea is you can have USB-C charging and other USB-A or thinner charging cables running up directly through the desk, and you can even sit a USB hub down there to tuck away all your laptop or PC peripheral cables.

That's great in theory, but for a PC gamer using lots of different kinds of peripherals and cables, the stylish cut-out isn't wide enough for some purposes. The Razer charging mouse pad I'm using, for instance, has a blocky electromagnetic interference choke near the end, so it won't fit through (though I guess one could call that a con of the mouse pad, it not having a detachable cable).

My mic's XLR cable won't fit through, either, and some larger gaming laptop power cables might struggle, too, though I found the bespoke charger on the Asus TUF A14 to fit through, and I bet most modern chargers would, too, as they tend to be no wider than a USB-A connector.

There are also routing holes for cables in the rear side of the drawer, so you can charge your devices while they're inside. If you're using a gaming laptop at your desk, I'd assume you'll want that power cable routed up top so you can have it plugged in while you game, but if it's a tablet, phone, or work laptop, charging it in the drawer and then having it cable-free up top looks like the goal.

There's also the possibility of using the drawer to house your laptop while it's turned on and plugged in, routing your cables up top to connect to your external monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Grovemade itself mentions this as a use case on its product page, aided by all the slots in the drawer for ventilation. For gaming, though, I doubt many will use it like that.

If I have a gaming laptop, I'm keeping it up top, and if I have a desktop, well, that obviously isn't going in the drawer, either. (Side-note: the top is spacious enough for even my Fractal Design Define R4 tower, and it supports the weight of a heavy gaming PC and two monitors plus peripherals just fine, with a max carry capacity of 270 lbs.)

The drawer itself is pretty huge, at least in terms of length and width. Depth is a different story, and will require some careful planning—or, if you're like me, lots of trial and error. That's because to achieve the flush, seamless look, Grovemade has gone for a sloped wedge design, so there's more room at the back of the drawer than the front. Grovemade claims you get 1.5 inches at the front, and this tapers to 2.5 inches at the back.

I can't imagine even a chunky laptop will struggle to fit in the main compartment, but the Lenovo Legion Go S only fits if it's pushed all the way to the back thanks to its joysticks. It's also worth noting that you get 11.25 inches of space from front to back in the main compartment, which won't be enough for an 18-inch gaming laptop but should be enough for a 16-inch one.

The shallower front sections are good for things like earbud cases, stationery, and dongles, but that's it. Annoyingly, it doesn't fit my glasses case—it fits my glasses without the case, though. It's also worth noting you'll have to scoot yourself back to open the drawer fully and access the larger rear sections of the drawer.

Overall, I'm very happy with the drawer, even if it can be frustrating when certain things don't fit in the front sections or near the front of the rear sections. Once you've figured out what's going where, it's a breeze.

The desk was pretty straightforward to build, too, in no small part thanks to the very helpful 25-page instruction manual. That chonky booklet was scary to behold, but once I got into the swing of it, it was fine. All told, it took me about two hours to build; there are plenty of steps, but none of them is particularly difficult. The diagrams are clear, as are the instructions, and the booklet is even kind enough to tell you when you're about halfway through and should go and get hydrated.

It is a two-person job, though. Even if you're strong, you're not going to want to risk flipping this thing over during one of the final steps on your lonesome. It's a wide, cumbersome, heavy desk that you really don't want to risk damaging. Fixing the screws on the legs would be easier with two people, too, but I did that alone, only getting a friend to help for the final desk flip.

Speaking of damage, though, a word of warning: Be careful when putting the desk together, especially if you're using a soft wood like walnut. There's a part of the building process that involves placing the drawer on the upside-down desk top before screwing it in.

I didn't get the holes aligned, and so I thought I'd just push the drawer up into proper alignment, but as I moved the drawer, it left a big scratch on the wood. Thankfully, this is on the underside of the desk, so I'll never see it, but that scratching sound did scare me a little. I'd recommend getting those drawer holes aligned without much scooting around, if possible.

Once the desk's built, all that's left to do is start your sit/stand control panel and set up your two preferred heights. The manual includes simple instructions on how to do so.

There are some handy accessories you can get for your fancy desk, too, such as a shelf to sit on top of the desk, a tray either for said shelf or again just to sit on top, or a desk pad. I have the former two, and the shelf does add some extra space and cable-tidy crevices. It hides my mic's XLR cable, for instance, which plugs into my interface that's also housed under the desk shelf. The tray mainly keeps my phone inside to help stop me checking it every five minutes.

These additions are all, inevitably, very expensive, but when you're starting at $3,200, what's another couple hundred?

If you're in it purely for the PC gaming pragmatics—if you just want a big desk that'll fit your nice fish tank chassis and myriad cables underneath—there are cheaper options that offer easier routing for bigger cables. But if you want a genuinely classy, minimalist look, plus storage space and plenty in the way of cable management, the Grovemade desk is as close to perfect as you'll get. Not completely perfect, mind, but it's in the right zip code.

The Autonomous SmartDesk 5 is no more expensive than Ikea's Utespelare, a non-motorised desk, and yet it does all the tricks. It'll sit, it'll stand, it'll… okay, that's about it, but that's not bad for a desk under $300.

The SmartDesk 5 is currently $249/CAD 699, though it's usually $299. It's not yet available in Europe, only the more expensive SmartDesk 2, but I'd like to see it land over here on that price alone. It's great value for money state-side, more affordable than even Flexispot, and we're a fan of a few of its budget desks. It'd be great to see it land across the Atlantic with similarly competitive prices.

Now, the company's name, Autonomous. It does suggest some sort of robotic magickry to whizz the desk around on its own. That's not the case. I'm happy to discover the company does make a robot, Alfred, though the desks and chairs are very much not in the same vein. They're much more normal. We've reviewed one of its desks previously, the Autonomous SmartDesk Core.

Autonomous does include a small box that sits underneath its desks called Stand (a part of its Habit system) to reward users for actually standing up during the day. As to whether any box can make me stand more often, that's likely not happening without applying a worrying amount of voltage to my shins if I don't comply, but I'll give it a go when it shows up and report back later.

The desk comes with an MDF desktop measuring 48 inches long and 24 inches wide. It's pretty lightweight—I had no trouble moving it around on my own—and it comes with the screw holes pre-drilled on the underside (which isn't always a given). There is a larger version, the SmartDesk 5 Pro, with a tougher HDF desktop measuring 53 x 19 inches. Though it's a costly upgrade at another $350 on top (literally).

The SmartDesk 5 helps keep costs down by employing only a single motor. Most have two, one within either leg, but it has only one on the right-hand side and mounted on the outside of the leg. It's a slightly clunkier solution, as you have to watch out for the motor hitting anything below when shifting the desk up and down. Plus, you have to install a power-transferring rod beneath the desk to connect up each of the leg mechanisms. Though once together, it works great. The single motor is able to lift 176 lbs (80 kg), slightly over half of what you'd get with dual motors (included on the Pro model).

Going back to the flat-packed box that appeared at the door one day, it's a fairly easy desk to put together. I didn't even have to ask for help from my partner or anything. That's less a testament to my muscles and more to the lightweight nature of MDF and a single-motor design.

On opening the box, I did notice a big knock to the MDF on the front-facing edge of the desk. Luckily, it's mostly on the front/underside, rather than the top. The packaging seemed largely suitable for the desk around the corners, but it has clearly ended up leaning on an edge or being bumped into at some point during its long trip from the USA to the UK. I asked Autonomous about this, and besides offering a brand new desktop (which I did not accept, it's perfectly serviceable), I've been told they are looking into improving the packaging to further protect the edges. A lick of white paint sorted it out, anyways.

That aside, the rest of the package came well packaged and all in one piece. Removing the legs, brackets, and feet, you can start to imagine how it all comes together. There's also a short instruction manual if you'd rather not 'raw-dog it', to quote one Jensen Huang.

First step, build a tiny bridge with the legs and connecting brackets. Then add the feet. Attach the desktop supports. Connect the power-transferring rod, which probably has a more official name, then flip the lot onto the awaiting desktop. Screw in using the provided screws (only an allen key and Philips-head screwdriver required—the box contains both). Lastly, attach the control panel to the underside. From there, if you prefer, you can attach the small orange hooks and cable tidies to the underside.

Click through the gallery below for the full build process:

Being a slightly smaller desktop than, say, the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL I have sat it next to, it's much easier to manoeuvre around without issue. Scooch it one way, schooch it the other, scooch it back, scoo… sorry. Even on my relatively shaggy carpeted floor, the feet don't catch, which makes these sorts of moves easy to do. The feet are adjustable, however, which helps to level the desktop when placed on a hard surface.

If you were planning to use this as your primary desktop, you wouldn't be too limited on space. It's admittedly going to be slightly dominated by a twin-monitor set-up, especially if you're braving it without a monitor arm. The same is true for anyone hoping to mount their PC on the desktop itself. That's not only going to hog precious space, but it's extra weight for the motor to lift. That 176 lbs (79.8 kg) lift limit will get gobbled up by a weighty PC tower, a couple of monitors (maybe 5–10 kg a piece), and all your Smitsky figurines—what do you mean you don't have any?!

Though the size of the desktop and the weight limit aren't massively limiting. Sure, you probably shouldn't put your entire weight on it to change a lightbulb (seriously, don't do that), but it's reasonable enough. There's plenty of room for a full-size keyboard, a large mouse mat, a monitor, and more. And it lifts at a reasonable speed.

It will also detect when it cannot go much further and reverse itself, which is good if you do bump into something beneath the desk when shifting it down. That said, it took a pretty immovable object to set it off, and a stack of motherboard boxes I tested it on was pretty squished before it decided to halt and reverse gear.

The desk is easy to adjust—much easier than a manual sit/stand desk. It's easy to set up predetermined heights for sitting, standing, and in my case, using a stool. Just press the up/down button to your desired position, hit set, and then apply it to one of the three presets via the corresponding buttons. It works much the same way as my Secretlab desk nearby, and while the buttons are a bit less responsive than Secretlab's, the price difference between the two is exponential.

I'm yet to scuff the desktop in any permanent way. I've built two gaming PCs atop of it, both with rubber feet, and the slight marks these left were easily wiped away. The coating seems relatively hard-wearing, though as exposed by the bump in transit, beneath is the bare MDF that could need covering in an oil-based paint in the unfortunate event of a rogue scratch or scuff.

Altogether, it's largely only the packaging that lets the SmartDesk 5 down, but I'd be willing to look over that if Autonomous make some improvements in that department. Shipping this desk halfway across the globe was never going to be good for its health, but it seems a fixable issue with a little more padding around the longer lengths of the desktop. Besides this one issue, the desk is a real winner.

It's very much the whole sit/stand experience. No half measures or manual-winding required, which I'm convinced no one continues to use after a fitful first few months. It works great, automatically, like any other high-quality motorised sit/stand desk. And all for $250. Heck yeah, I'm impressed.

Space is at a premium where I live. I may have been able to convert the wooden cabin at the end of my garden to a working space, but that still doesn't leave me with a ton of space in which to jam a couple of desks for my partner and I to work. So, a compact desk is absolutely something I've been looking for.

That's what the Corsair Platform:4 offers, especially in relation to its comparatively vast relation, the Corsair Platform:6.

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Platform:6. It's a huge desk, and comes with a lot of accessories, but the overall price of the package is extreme. And, if I'm being honest, it doesn't justify that price tag for me. Its premium pretensions are let down by the build process being a slog and the fact that its surface is supremely prone to scratching. That was laid bare when I first built it, and it has only gotten worse over time.

It's been stood up in the PC Gamer office for over a year now, housing the test rig and is the space where we test our gaming PCs. And the dark wood surface has not survived particularly well. In my time with the Platform:4, however, a lot of those issues have been ironed out.

The smaller Platform:4 does cost less, but the white and light wood version I've been testing still costs $1,000, and that's without the pegboard accessories the big boi desk comes with as part of its cost. That's a lot of money for a compact desk, no matter how premium it looks and feels.

That said, currently, the Platform:4 is seeing a hefty discount, down to $650 in the US, and that really does feel like a big difference compared to the Platform:6. And, at that price, it feels like easily the best compact gaming desk you can buy.

Personally, I'm okay with losing the pegboard and the twin side shelves to hit that price; the base setup still comes with the mounting bar, and you get an excellent single monitor arm as part of the initial package. I've got it supporting a large 34-inch ultrawide gaming panel without sagging at all.

Being a smaller unit, the build process is inevitably less complex, but I still feel like it was a more streamlined procedure, as certain parts were already in place out of the box. Though that is itself a slight issue, given the instructions for the Platform:4 are shared with the Platform:6, and there are slight variations not necessarily covered in them.

But I had the thing unpacked and the legs and electrics screwed into the desk in a jiffy (technical term, which reads: around 35 minutes), and I was ready to flip it over and quickly attach the mounting bar. That didn't take a lot of time either, and with that, I'm done. With the Platform:6, I was hit with missing screws (though given the extra spare fixings packet that wasn't a biggie) and some places where the machining wasn't the best. I've had none of that this time, and it does feel like any of the manufacturing inconsistencies of Corsair's first desk have been buffed out with the Platform:4.

Given the huge amount of packaging material (and there's enough packaging material for multiple trips to the dump/recycling centre) that springs forth from the box, I was pretty impressed with just how speedy it was to go from flat pack to standing.

And yes, this is the Elevate model, which means it can go from sitting to standing mode thanks to its smooth, motorised legs. This is the exact same mechanism which supports the more expensive desk and is just as impressive. The motion is fluid, and the legs are super sturdy despite only being a two-not-four-legged design. That smooth motion means there's no jerking start or finish to the movement, so you don't have to worry about that cup on your desk sloshing hot coffee over your lovely, clean desktop.

The mechanism only has two presets but where something like the Dezctop Bifrost Elite 160 I use day-to-day has four, I only ever find I use one sitting and one standing preset anyway. There's no middle ground for me—I just need an ergonomically accurate setting for when I'm in a chair and one for when I'm stood at my desk. But, should more than one of you be sharing a desk, that might become an issue as you fight over the height presets.

If you're very, very tall, it might be an issue, too, as the Platform:4 taps out at 122 cm in terms of the maximum height, where the Secretlab Magnus Pro hits 125 cm, and the Dezctop will go up to 130 cm. For most of us, however, that's not going to be a problem. I'm a shade under six foot tall, and my standing preset is a comfortable 110 cm, so you would need to be a real long boi for 122 cm to be an issue, ergonomically speaking.

Maybe I've been more careful this time, but I've made not a dent in the surface of the Platform:4. By this point, with the Platform:6 ,a great gouge and multiple scratches were evident on the dark laminate, but this birch + pine stain desktop feels far more forgiving. I do like how chunky the wooden top is, too; it's far thicker than my Dezctop's desktop. And, honestly, I prefer this light look; it makes the desktop feel clean and less oppressive in your living space.

That clean desktop look is aided by a little 'bits' tray that comes in the box, and a little cubby hole in the rear centre of the desktop itself to hide charging cables and such. On the underside of the desk is a wide cable management tray where I've perched a six-socket extension cable, which powers both the desk itself and the system I have on top of it. That means there's just a single cable going into a wall socket with everything else hidden under the desktop.

It makes everything far more accessible than the canvas solution the Dezctop Bifrost uses, and has made swapping systems and accessories around much easier.

As I noted at the top of the review, I also really appreciate the smaller size of this desktop. At just four feet wide (not just a clever name), the space may not be huge when you've got a full PC at your side, but if you're in a place that doesn't allow for an enormous L-shaped desk, then the Platform:4 gives you a good-looking, sturdy alternative. It's also pleasingly deep, at 30 inches, it still feels relatively spacious despite the limited width.

It being part of the Platform family means that, although this is a pretty simple setup out of the box, there are a bunch of excellent additions to it should you want to expand the desk in the future. Personally, I think the $300 pegboard is not worth the cash, but if you find yourself wishing for a little more sideways space, there are easily attached extensions you can pick up for $40 in the future which are wide and sturdy enough to support a desktop PC. You can also get myriad Elgato mounts if you want to connect a stand for your webcam or key light, which sit on the mounting bar.

And the fact that you get a monitor arm in the package is a nice touch, too. With deskspace limited here, being able to shift your screen up, up, and away is super handy.

In all, I'm far more fond of the Platform:4 than its larger sibling. The setup is quick, the desktop sturdy, yet still relatively spacious, and it all feels fully premium, from build to final use. And more than anything, the price tag doesn't always make me rub my eyeballs in shock. You might well prefer the big ol' Secretlab Magnus, all RGB, magnets and metal, but it doesn't offer anything for those without the space for its five-foot+ desks.

I still can't ignore the fact the non-discount price is so damned high, but if Corsair is willing to drop the sort of discount which brings it down to $650 again, that makes the Platform:4 a great buy. And that would certainly cement it as one of my favourite gaming desks.

If you've ever thought "my desk is missing the map of the Imperium of Man" or "I need to see Holy Terra and Mars every morning", Secretlab's new Warhammer 40,000 desk may be the solution to your problems. Well, one of your problems.

Announced today is a Warhammer 40,000 version of Secretlab's popular Magnus Pro standing desk. We consider the XL variant to be the best gaming desk right now, and the only difference between XL and standard, as you may be able to guess, is its size.

The top of the desk has a desk mat with the map of the Imperium of Man, complete with regal insignias. It looks a little worn in a rather cool way, and the mapping of certain planets and structures feels messy in a bloodsplat kind of way.

That desk mat is bundled into the Warhammer 40,000 edition of the desk, which also means you can buy it separately, should you already have your own Magnus desk.

The Magnus Pro special edition desk mats start at $129, so it seems likely that buying the Warhammer desk mat by itself will cost you that much.

The press release sent to PC Gamer technically says you can paint miniatures on it, but if you're anything like me, you should probably avoid that. I know I wouldn't want splatters of paint, blood, and tears all over my fancy new desk. Yeah, painting miniatures is a big event for me.

Our Jacob uses the Magnus and suggests you best avoid getting dollops of thermal paste on your desk mat, too. Not that he's done that. Nope.

In May last year, Secretlab announced the 40,000 variant of its Titan Evo chair, complete with a purity seal, and on the one year anniversary of its announcement, this desk is there to match it.

As well as this new desk mat, plus the Warhammer 40,000 bundle, you can pick a Warhammer 40K-themed cable management set, which is a grouping of anchors, sheaths, and fastening straps to pull in cables and wrap them around parts of the desk.

If you have a PC, a console, and a few monitors, there's a good chance you will want some sort of solution to better manage your wires. It just so happens the new cable management bundle comes plastered with skulls, logos, and oh so much blood.

We don't yet have a firm price on the new Warhammer 40,000 Magnus Pro. However, buying a Magnus Pro outright with a themed desk mat and cable management bundle right now will cost $947, so we anticipate the launch of the desk will come in at a similar price.

I don't know if I'd like to get paint on my new desk if I'd spent that much money, but it also sort of adds to that bloody aesthetic. More blood for the blood god, I suppose.

Usually, when I see the term 'gaming desk', I think whatever marketer has got their hands on the keyboard has maybe been a bit overzealous, yet the Thunder X2 Lab-X makes a decent argument for that in its many neat additions.

The Lab-X has a mesh side plate (with crucial optional fan brackets) for cooling, a tempered glass mousepad top, a track system to add headphone or cup holders, and built-in collision detection to stop it from breaking anything as the entire table rises or drops. Though not all these extras proved to be quite as useful as I might have hoped, it all comes together to offer a strong package at a reasonable price point.

Thunder X3's Lab-X is a tough bit of hardware to build. It's not only very heavy, weighing just under 50 kg but wide, at 170 cm. You will likely want two or more people involved in the build, and this is only part of the battle. It has many, many bolts you have to screw in with an hex key, of which the table only provides one.

As well as this, many of the bolts are right next to other parts of the desk, so you can't do a full rotation, meaning you have to put the hex key in, turn it a quarter, take it out, and put it back again. After about thirty minutes of moving, building, a little bit of weeping, and moving again, you can then flip the table over and set it up.

To make this process a little less messy on the end result, the box does come with a pair of gloves to avoid getting your fingerprints all over it. However, once set up, the tempered glass top is an absolute fingerprint magnet. If you spend the time wearing gloves for the entire process, you will discover it's all in vain once you spot fingerprints starting to display after thirty minutes of gaming.

As well as all of this, I had the unique displeasure of finding out my room has walls that curve inward slightly just hours after setting the table up. It's a height-adjustable desk so, after sending the desk up, it resulted in a big scratch through the paint of my walls. The table left that clash unscathed.

In a sense, this is both a testament to the strength of the table and an indictment of the quality of my paint. It is worth noting this is a relatively niche thing to happen, and more the painters who decorated my apartment's fault than Thunder X3's.

I tested the collision detection by using it normally as I would throughout the last few weeks but also by placing a cardboard box under the table and making it go down. Though there was certainly some pressure as it took a moment to register the collision, it wasn't enough to do any damage to the box.

In return for these quibbles, the Lab-X delivers a striking good experience once setup and gaming. It is a very sturdy build that I never thought twice about after getting it set up. Taking the weight of a PC, multiple books, a board game, and my music production setup, it can handle everything I've put on it without affecting its motor. .

Outside of the scratch on my wall, the collision detection has not yanked any wires out of place and it moves moderately fast. Though not quite silent as the ThunderX3 webpage states, it's certainly a smooth and relatively quiet motor. The 75 cm to 120 cm height range is also solid, being 18 cm shorter in scope than the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL, which is currently our top pick for the best gaming desk.

On the right-hand side sits a small panel with a clear screen. To the left of that screen are two buttons that can send the desk up or down. Then, on the right are two presets you can set by holding for 2 seconds at a desired height.

Finally, there is a 'health mode' button, which adjusts the height of the desk slowly over time to make you change your posture and position. The light creak of things on my desk moving put me off this mode pretty quickly but I could see this working for a certain type of desk user

The Lab-X's aesthetic is sleek and clean. All black, with different shades for different sections. The glass mousepad on the top is super smooth to game on and cool to the touch. Then, past that tempered top is an aluminium back. The sides are then made out of that same aluminium material but have a mesh texture, intended to fit fan accessories that are sold separately.

I couldn't personally verify any heat dissipation claims with said fans as I don't have them but it does give a good location to place gaming hardware and you can feel the heat underneath the mesh when a PC or console is placed on it.

It is worth noting, if you're in the market for this desk, that tempered glass panels have their own issues you have to work around. Though more heat resistant than normal glass, they can suffer from thermal shock so keep hot drinks away from it.

As well as that, tempered glass is prone to scratches, which could harm a mouse's ability to accurately pick up movement. I saw neither of these problems as I used the desk but it's a consideration I'll keep making as I continue to place drinks and equipment on it.

The legs are far enough apart that two chairs can fit in between them for coworking and there's plenty of space on the 170 cm by 75 cm top for two people, too. My model came with the cup and earphone holder attachment and these can be fitted on via a rather neat track system just under the sides of the table. You effectively take off part of the corner, place your attachment in, and then screw that into the base. This means not only can you adjust the position of attachments quickly but you can add more accessories as you buy them, as Thunder X3 puts them out.

Unfortunately, one extra feature the Lab-X could benefit from including is a form of wire management. It has management underneath for the cable you plug the desk in with but it's missing anything more. This means setting up your PC, monitor, and extra accessories often means implementing a secondary wire management system to avoid dangling everything down the back.

The Secretlab Magnus Pro XL will likely be the Thunder X3's biggest competition right now, as they are similarly sized and both have a black sleek aesthetic. The latter desk is lighter, cheaper ($600 vs $950), and has a few neat features. Both desks are very firm and a shove only barely wiggles the Lab-X.

However, Secretlab's offering comes with wire management, a wider top and a deeper range of height. It also has a few more preset buttons and comes with a separate desk mat.

However, for its price, Thunder X3 offers a really good bit of gaming furniture here. The build is a tedious and long one, and the gloves are more or less pointless given how many fingerprints get on it but it's super sturdy, the motor runs relatively quiet, and the side of the table is strong enough to fight with my wall and come out on top.

I'm slightly annoyed I'll have to repaint part of my living room but I don't think 'the walls curve inwards' is something the desk can reasonably account for, especially when its anti-collision technology has stopped it from whacking into anything else I own. It may not be an out-and-out Secretlab beater but it puts up worthy competition at a cheaper price point.

The day gaming desks were renamed to battle stations, I knew marketing targeted to my demographic was always going to be just a touch batshit. Now you can get desks complete with RGB lighting, standing desks, desks that are actually a bed and much more. While undeniably cool, that’s not always what a fair chunk of gamer people are looking for in a desk. In fact, I’d argue a lot of us just want something that does the job of holding up our stuff while looking smart and not being uncomfortable to sit at at a reasonable price.

IKEA’s Utespelare gaming desk absolutely nails that brief, but adds a few extra features that I’d argue are more battle worthy than an inbuilt rave experience.

The Utespelare comes in two colour options, an all black which feels very gamer chic, or a breezier grey with light wood look top. Both are otherwise identical so i grabbed the lighter colour way to match my setup. Unsurprisingly it arrived as a flat packed box ready to end relationships in its assembly.

Because the table top is largely one piece, it’s quite a large unwieldy box and you need a bit of room to set it up. This includes flipping the desk after installing the table top which was a mighty effort, but that’s to be expected for a desk this size.

That’s the first thing to hit me about the Utespelare gaming desk, it’s really pretty big. Coming from standing desks, having a 160 cm by 80 cm workspace is actually huge.

You can easily fit a full sized PC, a couple of monitors, routers, your mug printing gear, and that old iMac you rescued out of the rubbish and have been working on getting up and running for fun without any trouble. Plus there’s a decent amount of space under it for more stuff thanks to the relatively small space taken by the legs.

The official site says it has a 50 kg max tolerance but I’m a mystery number over that and have sat on it for science while feeling pretty safe. I can even lay on it if I’m a bit curled up. I could probably put curtains around the bottom and rent it in this dystopia.

There is just so much room for activities on this flat surface of opportunity.

While putting the desk together there are a couple of choices to make. One is how tall you’re looking to have your desk—which is decided by the leg height. This can be adjusted from 66 cm to 78 cm which is an important feature for ergonomics.

You’ll want to choose your height fast though, because it’s not so easy to adjust once everything is all set up. It’s a little weird if you’ve come from the flexibility of a sit stand setup, but with all the space on this desk it would be perfect for one of those desktop raisers added later down the line.

The other choice is where to place the metal mesh portion of the desktop and how that relates to the cut out in the wooden piece. After consulting the ancient Swedish hieroglyphics, I went with having the cut out backing onto the metal, giving me a really tidy way to hide my cables when pared with the hammock solution included.

It’s one of the easier cable management options to actually use I’ve seen built into a desk as I can keep a power board there, that’s easily accessible for swapping things while still hiding all of my mess.

While being a helpful cable tidy, the metal portion of the desktop is also perfect for all my hot running gamer stuff. It’s a great place to put your PC knowing it’ll have all the airflow it could possibly want accessible to it. I’ve also used it as a place to stick things like routers and other hot-running electronics. It’s great because they’re out of the way at the back of my deep desk but I don’t worry about them overheating or being covered in dust.

While the Utespelare is billed as a gaming desk it feels like a much more sensible product made with gamers in mind than the usual affair. It’s simple, smart, sturdy, and clean. When I walk past it sometimes I just look at it and smile, thinking to myself what a decent desk that is for AUD$199 and how useful it is while still looking quite good in my home.

I know that means I’m getting old, but it’s also a pretty clear sign that IKEA has delivered with this stealth battle station.

Of all the various trinkets and doodads that find their way across my desk and into my loving arms, rarely is there one that tidies my workspace. But that's what this Thermaltake pegboard does, and it does so in a rather simple but stylish way.

Smart and sturdy: that's how I'd describe this pegboard. But that's if I were comparing pegboard to pegboard, in a world where gaming desk pegboards were commonplace. We don't live in such a world, however. In this one, the average person has nary even seen a desk pegboard in the wild, let alone owned one.

So, much better that we first clarify exactly what this thing does and whether it's better to have one (in general) than not have one (in general). Here goes.

It's a plate—a piece of your finest powder-coated steel—chock full of holes to fit various storage and organisation accessories. It's essentially a DIY-er's space-saving shelving unit. But one that looks a little trendy in this gamer space. We see big ones behind used on gaming desks such as the Corsair Platform: 6 and Decztop Bifrost Elite.

The Thermaltake pegboard is one that you can fit on your non-pegboardy desk to get in on some of that peggy action, letting you hook and balance all kinds of things hopefully not-so-precariously vertically up the side of your desk.

So, how's it stack up? Well, first things first, I've had no complaints at all about sturdiness and build quality. It's only staying stuck to my desk because of its clamping mechanism, but I've honestly pushed and shook it quite hard and it doesn't move an inch. The steel is plenty strong, too.

It's only really with the single-peg accessories (the hooks) that "flimsy" comes to mind, because without two fixed points it can, of course, turn a little. But that's just the nature of single-peg pegboard accessories in general.

It was easy to set up, of course, being just a twisty-clampy ordeal. And once it's set up, it does look rather smart. I have mine on the left-hand side of my desk, which also gives my desk a little more of a boxed-in, cosy feel.

How about function? On that front, I've been quite pleased with it, but I'd have liked some different accessories to ship with it. I'm not sure whether I'm an oddball in this respect, but I have zero use for hooks or pin magnets. There's nothing small and magnetic that I want to attach, and no standalone cables I want easily available. That leaves me with a headphone holder and two controller holders for this Medium version. I only really need one controller holder, so that's just two useful accessories that come with it (for my use case, anyway).

What I'd have really liked is either a pen holder or a flat platform for me to display something, possibly even whatever book I happen to be reading at the moment. (I did actually rest a book on the controller holder for a while, but it was a little precarious.)

The large version of the pegboard, which is $10 extra and 52 x 42 cm, comes with just such useful accessories. In addition to some hooks and magnets (ugh), it also comes with one headset holder, two pen holders, and one storage shelf. But no controller holders in this one, for some reason. I had to go for the Medium because my desk has metal supports underneath that limited my clamping room, but I'd have probably gone Large if I could.

The main annoyance for me is that there doesn't seem to be an ideal package, whether small, medium, or large. What would be ideal? Well, IMO, that would be one controller holder, one headset holder, a pen holder, and a long platform, plus maybe a shorter display platform. And sure, throw in some hooks and pin magnets—why not? There's no version that comes with all of these things, though, and that's my only gripe.

On the plus side, it looks like the holes are spaced about an inch apart, so you might be lucky fitting third-party accessories to it, given a lot of them have similar peghole spacing.

And that brings us to the crux of it: Thermaltake's marketing this as a "gaming desk pegboard", but don't for a second assume that it's the only desk-clamp pegboard on the market and that this is a gaming-specific niche. Just search "desk clamp pegboard" on Amazon and you'll come up with a range of options, including some with incredibly similar accessories.

Saying that, though, the price does seem about right for this Thermaltake one. In fact, it's significantly cheaper than many third-party options from brands I've never heard of.

Where does that leave us, then? Well, it's not a particularly unique product and it comes with a frustratingly thin variety of accessories, but it's reasonably priced, comes from a known gaming brand, and feels like a sturdy, quality product.

My suggestion: If you're looking for a pleasant way to save some desk space and display your gubbins, and if you're willing to look out for some cheap third-party accessories, go for it. But if you want a wide variety of accessories in the box, this pegboard unfortunately isn't it.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as the saying goes, and in Blacklyte's case, it's flattering the heck out of Secretlab. The Blacklyte Atlas gaming desk—from the product's webpage to the actual desk itself—appears to me as being very heavily influenced by the Secretlab Magnus Pro desk.

The Atlas isn't a direct 1:1 copy but it's pretty close, and for some people that actually might be a good thing. After all, getting a Secretlab desk for a not-Secretlab price would be awesome. Except that's not the case here, as Blacklyte is asking $999/£899 for its gaming desk, more than the base version of the Magnus Pro. Even if you add optional extras to the latter, such as more cable management and an ARGB lighting kit (to match the Atlas), then it's still $72 cheaper.

Now, if the Atlas was noticeably better than the Magnus Pro, that would be understandable. But it's not. Don't get me wrong: the Blacklyte Atlas is a pretty good gaming desk but the Canada-based company has missed the mark with how it's set the price.

So what exactly are you getting for your thousand dollars bar a buck? It's a motorised, height-adjustable fully steel desk, replete with RGB lights, a big cable management tray, and a full-desk mouse pad.

I have to say that my first impression was of great concern because the two boxes (one containing the desk surface and tray, the other for the legs) looked as if they'd made their way through four war zones, a hurricane, and an industrial car wash for good measure to reach my office. Fortunately, the contents were in good fettle, so I set about putting it all together.

The instruction manual suggests using two people and having lots of empty space to build the Atlas, but I decided to see if I could do it all by myself and in my rather small office.

I have to say that it was very easy to put together, nor did I require lots of room to do it, but the final step of flipping the finished build onto its legs was beyond my feeble frame. The Blacklyte Atlas is pretty heavy, a little under 30 kg (66 lbs) in weight and combined with its overall size, rotating about the x-axis is a two-person job.

Once upright, I was greeted with a bit of a disappointment. The top surface of the desk is entirely covered with a leatherette mouse pad that magnetically attaches to the steel top. The edge nearest where one would use the desk had large ripples in it and despite using lots of heavy objects to smooth it out, I wasn't able to completely remove them.

That particular issue just could be with this review sample but if I had paid $999 of my own money on this desk, I'd be considerably less than happy.

What I was pleased with were the motorised legs. They're incredibly solid and even at full height, the desk barely moves, although it's best suited for use on a hard floor. My office has a carpet with a thick pile and it did cause some very minor wobbles with the legs fully extended. The action is adjusted via buttons on the right-hand side of the desk's front panel, with an LCD display indicating the height.

There are only two memory presets available, fewer than the Secretlab Magnus Pro, but I suspect that would be more than enough for most users. There's a handy button at the far right that locks the buttons from being accidentally pressed, but the desk is more than wide enough to ensure that this is unlikely to ever occur.

The Blacklyte Atlas is fitted with a collision detection system, which cuts power to the lifting motors if a blockage is detected. Unfortunately, it only kicks in if the desk is seriously impeded by something: I wouldn't want to test out whether it'll barge right past a trapped finger or not.

On the other side of the front panel, there are five buttons for enabling and controlling the RGB lighting: one each for the front strip, the side strips, and the corner lights. Blacklyte claims that the corner lights are magnetic with a "collision-resistant structure" and that they have "built-in RGB fantasy LED lights, support[ing] 1600W true color display."

I can't vouch for the actual power output of all the lighting but it's certainly very bright. In fact, the front strip is so bright, that it's very distracting when you're sat at the desk, working or gaming. One can alter the lights through three modes (yellow, green, red, blue, or pulsing between them all) but you can't change the brightness at all, via the desk's controls. Fortunately, switching the front strip off makes the desk far more pleasurable to use.

Blacklyte also claims that the lights can "sync with PC programs and match gaming algorithms to enhance gaming experience" via a lengthy USB Type-A cable, but the PC I connected it to didn't recognise them in any way. Confusingly, the manual actually says that the "host computer cable" is for "desktop height-adjustment control."

Update 11 December: Buried at the bottom of the Atlas webpage is a download for the 'Atlas Driver'—this is Blacklyte's control software, and not just a driver, for the desk's lighting system, which I confess to missing in the original review. After a few issues with installing the software and updating the desk's firmware, I was able to adjust all of the lights but the lifting mechanism refused to be recognised by the software.

While the mistake in missing this is mine, I do feel that the software deserves a far more prominent position on Blacklyte's site, given its importance in controlling the desk's features.

Speaking of cables, the Atlas has a large section at the rear of the desk that can flip open, revealing a cavernous tray for hiding cables. It's a bit too large and if you don't like having monitors right in front of your face, then they need to rest on top of the tray's lid. I can imagine that having to move screens about every time you want to get into the tray would become irksome rather quickly.

There's a reasonably sized gap between the tray lid and the desk surface itself which should, in theory, permit the use of monitor arms. However, the mounting clamps of such devices would end up digging into the mouse pad and permanently marking or even cutting it.

You could try fitting arms to the cable tray's lid but then you wouldn't be able to open it.

One good thing about the Atlas is that the mains power cable that supplies electricity for the lights and lifting motors plugs into a socket at the bottom of the left leg. At the top of the same leg, there's a general power outlet that you plug the desk's power controller into. However, one can plug an extension strip into that socket instead and then power up the desk via the strip.

This allows you to place the strip in the cable tray, providing sockets to power monitors, accessories, and potentially even your gaming PC. Blacklyte states that the outlet and associated wiring have a current limit of 10 amps, so you can't massively load it up, but it does mean that you can avoid having wires dangling down the back of the desk.

That also avoids the potential issue of having the desk hoisting any wires or electrical strips off the floor when it's at its maximum height.

Taken as a whole, there's a lot to like with the Blacklyte Atlas gaming desk. It's incredibly solid and spacious, easy to build (hefty weight aside), and the mouse pad surface is genuinely comfortable. Unfortunately, there are just as many aspects to not like about the Atlas, such as the build quality in places and the fiddly software.

But what doesn't help is the price—it's a little too expensive for what it is, and if one treats it as a Secretlab Magnus Pro clone, then you have to ask why pay more for the Atlas if it's not better. If you can find one on sale, with a healthy discount, then it's worth considering but I'd prefer the Blacklyte to just give it a more sensible price permanently, undercutting the competition to make it far more tempting.

In the words of The Dude, it really ties the room together, man. The Bifrost Elite 160 height adjustable desk has kinda completed my new home gaming station and. For a man seemingly incapable of creating a non-cluttered work and gaming space (just ask Jacob, who has been working with me for the best part of a decade), it's also keeping me fastidiously tidy. 

Who knew tight cable management, some monitor mounts, and a couple wee shelves could do that to a notoriously untidy middle-aged man, but here I am with a pristine desktop where just my keyboard, mouse, mic, and phone exist. And it feels good. 

It's actually even making me think it might be worth tidying up my office desktop in PCG Towers, too. But that might be a change too far, and I don't think I can become that much of a better person in one fell swoop.

But such changes of character don't come cheap, and the Bifrost Elite 160 is a behemoth of a desk with a similar design ethos to the Corsair Platform:6, and a price that, while not quite so eye-wateringly high, is still going to sting. For the full configuration I've been testing—with a bunch of accessories marking a genuine quality of life upgrade—you're looking at $1,140.

That's around the same sort of price as the mega desk of our dreams, the mighty Secretlab Magnus Pro XL, our current pick as the best gaming desk. Which does give the Dezctop desktop a bit of a problem. While it can claim to be similar, but far cheaper than the Corsair Platform:6, with all its accessories it's an effective price match to the Secretlab and honestly does suffer by comparison.

Don't get me wrong, I am impressed by the Bifrost Elite 160, and am really enjoying my time with it, but when the prices are equivalent it's only natural you start to look at the differences in them. The Secretlab oozes quality, from its magnetic cable-tidying doodads, to its ultra smooth, responsive motor, and that all-metal desktop covered with what is effectively an all leather mouse mat.

The high-density fiberboard of the Dezctop isn't quite as luxurious as the Secretlab's metal top or the thick desktop of the Platform:6. Though it is lighter, and certainly doesn't feel in any way flimsy at all. And, to be completely honest, the fiberboard top is probably what really allowed me to put the Bifrost Elite 160 together on my own. Flipping it onto its feet wasn't the spine-testing challenge that righting either the Corsair or Secretlab desks is.

I would also note that even after a good long while of regular use—and a lot of PC building and testing later—the surface is unmarked and free of any scratches or unsightly gouges. The same could not be said for the Platform:6 which suffered an almighty gash during the building process.

For a motorised desk, though, so much of the experience is about how good the transition from sitting to standing is. The Dezctop Bifrost Elite 160 comes with a three-stage leg (the cheaper Bifrost Pro 160 comes with just a two-stage leg) which allows it to shift between a wider array of heights than either the Secretlab or Corsair—taller than both and much lower than the Corsair specifically. 

A lack of range was one of the things which put us off the latest four-legged Flexispot E2Q, and that extra capability to hit a lower desk height is a definite plus for the Dezctop desk.

That's actually been super handy for me, not because I'm particularly short—though it would suit a human smaller in the leg than I—but because I've taken the opportunity of having a desk I can attach a steering wheel to again to get into racing games once more. Being able to drop the height to a lower point, while sitting in a lower chair, gives me a better angle to the pedals at my feet.

I have found myself getting frustrated by the actual action of the motor, however. The motion is smooth enough, with a deceleration that stops the desktop wobbling unduly or spilling liquid sat atop it. And the motor will cease its movement when it comes into contact with just enough resistance. It feels sometimes like a little too much resistance is needed, but that's been the same with every motorised standing desk I've ever used.

No, the frustration stems from the lag between pressing the buttons and anything happening. I suppose I understand the energy saving consideration of putting the height controller to sleep when it's not in use, but you need to wake the thing up by pressing any button on the front of it and then pressing again to get any positive reaction. That doubling up of button-pressing effort is only a minor thing, but it stops the setup from feeling responsive when you've had enough of sitting on your butt and you want to stand up for a moment.

But I love the cable management setup. Initially the felt canvas bags slung under the rear of the desk felt a bit like a cost-cutting exercise, but the soft material means there's no noise from the myriad cables writhing around in them. For this 160 cm desk, there are three separate bags stretching across the full length of the desk. Corresponding to this are three magnetic lids which can be lifted to access or jam in any errant cable. The lids slide forward and back allowing you to have leads snaking out from the rear or the front, depending on what you want to plug them into.

The space afforded the cable management is excellent, too. There's ample space for a full power extension board in there, meaning you can have a single power cable from the wall to your desk, and everything from your PC, monitors, and the motorised desk itself, hidden away. It's super neat, and it's this more than anything that has encouraged me to be a tidier version of me.

It also helps the version I've been testing has come chock full of accessories. The thing which makes the Bifrost Elite 160 feel so similar to the Platform:6 is the pegboard lifting from the rear of the desk. It's a similar setup to Corsair's, and similarly allows you to mount optional accessories to that space.

I have a little pot hooked behind my main monitor which currently houses a Windows install on a USB stick, a screwdriver, some thermal paste, a wee Kailh RGB keyswitch keyring, a pencil, the detachable mic from my Maxwell headset, my Xbox Elite Series 2 and USB dongle, as well as the 2.4 GHz dongle for a set of Logitech earbuds the location of which I couldn't tell you. That's all stuff that would have been strewn across my desktop in another life.

It also came with a pair of small shelves that I've attached at either extremity of the pegboard and upon which stand the outstanding wee Kanto Ora speakers. And the detachable numpad from my Mountain Everest 60 keyboard and on the other side a faux Lego motherboard diorama.

It also helps I've got a pair of monitor mounts which affix directly to the pegboard using a standard VESA connection, one with a 32-inch Gigabyte screen and the other with a 27-inch Dough panel. That keeps the desktop free of monitor stands, too, and it all adds up to a clean, good-looking setup, that I'm still stunned is so clear of, for want of a better phrase, my assorted crap.

I'll be straight, though, as I first set up the Bifrost Elite 160 I was heartily disappointed when it came to getting the pegboard in place. The rest of the assembly process had been really pleasing; everything was easily explained (though slightly frustratingly that it's only via an online manual) and went together easily. It all feels good quality, reassuringly solid, and robust once it's on its own two feet.

The pegboard, however, feels incredibly flimsy. It's a plastic board with a metal frame, and comes in four parts for this 160 cm desk, and given that I knew I was going to attach a couple of monitors that I really didn't want ending up face down on my desktop after slipping their plastic mounting, I will admit I was concerned.

That concern has proved ill-founded over my time with the Bifrost Elite 160, however, as both monitors feel incredibly solid, as does the entire desktop. I'm not necessarily the most aggressive typist, but I can bash a key with the best of them, and the Bifrost will only wobble if I really try and push it. The screens barely move, and the cutouts in the pegboard allow me to route monitor cables to keep them free of even the cable tidy ducts and fed into the back of my PC. Which is a chonky beast though has never felt perilously perched atop the Dezctop desktop.

I'm also into the Bifrost accessories game, too. The headset hanger is a winner, especially now I'm using the Kanto speakers more, and the cupholder—which can fold away neatly—is very much a welcome addition.

So yeah, it's a good-looking, sturdy desk, with just a few tiny niggles that maybe keep it in the Secretlab's shadow. I will say I do like the size; at 160 cm wide it's got plenty of space without feeling like it's dominating my office room. The Corsair and Secretlab are just a bit too much for me. It is still an equally pricey ol' desk, however, and while I know furniture ain't cheap, this feels like a lot of money to drop on a desk. Though I know I would rather spend the money on the Bifrost Elite 160 than spend another $700 on the Corsair Platform:6, even if it does have maybe a more luxury finish.

The Flexispot E2Q is a lovely desk, which is why I'm quite sad I can't keep it entirely for myself. It's sturdy, easily adaptable, and I'm quite partial to its broad bamboo top. Unfortunately, I'm in the process of swapping offices with my partner, and I didn't properly account for the massive size that the E2Q lets you pick, which means that the desk—and its broad bamboo top—will have to remain in my old office when I move.

I was impressed by the Flexispot E2Q from the start thanks to a far easier-than-expected build process. Billed as a job for two people, in the end it took me less than two hours to do the entire thing myself, and that was a timeframe that included snacking and a search for a tool that I ended up not even needing (a drill, if you're wondering, though you will want a pretty hefty electric screwdriver). 

Only one hole felt very slightly misaligned, but otherwise the whole thing came together extremely smoothly, and I was willing to ignore a single error in a 90-minute build. The instruction booklet was comprehensive, though I did refer to some video instructions to get a slightly better sense of how a couple of components should be added, and the only time I felt I might have benefited from a second pair of hands was in flipping the final product over once I'd finished assembling it.

That's because the E2Q is pretty hefty. I'd opted for a 180 x 80 cm desktop, which despite its impressive size isn't even the largest top available—that privilege goes to a monstrous 200 x 90 desktop that's only available for a limited array of options. Thankfully, my choice of bamboo over real wood meant the finished product wasn't as heavy as it could have been, and also means that I'm not really missing out on aesthetic. Even up close, the surface looks like true wood, which means that the E2Q fits in nicely with both office furniture and more traditional home furnishings.

The level of customization that speaks to is an impressive boon, but it's one that comes with a price. My 180 x 80cm bamboo top almost doubled the price of the E2Q, and that's before any of Flexispot's other optional extras, which could send prices spiralling. The desk itself feels like decent value, but you could add almost anything you might imagine a desk would need to your order, from extra cable management and built-in power outlets to peg boards and filing cabinets. But with prices for these extras starting at $60/£40 for a standing mat or $46/£60 for an extension lead, I feel like you're better off not paying over the odds.

The E2Q's size is matched by its strength, though. This desk can hold up to 150 kg, moving that weight through its 73-123 cm range at a max speed of 2.5 cm per second. It's a smooth journey both up and down, even when lifting decent weight, and it's helped along by a clear display and four programmable presets. It's strong enough that at one point during testing, I didn't realise I'd trapped the desk under the open door of a nearby cupboard until the entire thing started tipping back, having been hoisted by the E2Q.

That's some impressive heft, but it's also indicative of arguably my biggest concern. The E2Q offers anti-collision tech, which is supposed to make the desk reverse course if it encounters an obstacle while moving. For anything really solid, like the arms of a desk chair, the desktop would lift back up immediately once it encountered a surface it couldn't move through. 

If it could continue moving, however, it would do so. It took some serious force to get it to reverse course, particularly while moving downwards, and at one point it crushed the top of a nearby spray bottle before belatedly rising back up. I eventually learned that it's possible to further adjust the mechanism's sensitivity, but for a tool that's specifically billed to help protect children or pets, it's worrying that that's not built in from scratch, particularly for such a heavy piece of furniture that could already be holding some serious weight given its impressive carrying capacity.

Thankfully, there's a chance—at least for very small children—that might not be a concern. That's because the E2Q is very tall. At its maximum height of 123 cm, it'll just about cater to a comfortable standing height of a 205 cm man. For reference, that's somewhere around the 99.5th percentile. 

At the other end of the spectrum, however, 73 cm is slightly too tall for my partner to sit comfortably, despite the fact that she's 164 cm tall, and that's pretty much bang average for a woman in the UK. Anywhere in between those heights, and you should be very comfortable using the E2Q whether sitting or standing, but its extremely high minimum feels like a strange oversight given its impressive adaptability elsewhere.

Because when it comes to nearly every other factor, the Flexispot E2Q is almost too adaptable. Four presets feels like two more than I need, and its millimetre-level height control feels super specific. Even its cable management solutions seemed surplus to its relatively meagre wiring requirements. And with so many optional extras to choose from, you could use the E2Q as a simple slab of wood from which to work, or as the basis for an entire electrified battlestation that takes up half a room. 

With so much opportunity to make this desk your own, there are a couple of QoL omissions that feel like unfortunate own goals for a design that would otherwise have felt like a surefire winner. The E2Q is a very good desk, and I'm still a bit sad that I have to relinquish it to my partner, but those caveats are substantial enough that I'd still urge a touch of caution before jumping in here.

Desktop space is a common request from gamers that work and game in one place, but if you're working with limited space or an awkward corner, expansion is not always easy. That's where an L-shaped desk comes in, such as this Flexispot E7L Pro, which I've found simple enough to set-up and stuff into a corner for a big upgrade.

The Flexispot E7L Pro is a motorised sit/stand desk, with three motorised legs capable of holding up to 150 kg, inclusive of whichever desktop you screw into it. That's the thing, you can buy a desktop from Flexispot for $90/£200, or you can bring your own to mount on the three-leg frame, which costs $550/£370. For that reason, the exact size of the desk is variable, but the frame is made to accommodate that, which will become clear in the build.

With the standard desktop from Flexispot, this review unit measures 180 cm in length, with the shorter part of the 'L' measuring 120 cm. The entire desktop is 60 cm deep. All together, it's plenty of space for a couple of monitors (with their own stands), keyboard, mouse, a laptop, drink, plant, and miscellaneous soldering gear I should probably tidy up.

The process of building the E7L was relatively easy. It arrives across three big boxes, including the Flexispot desktop, which is optional. Each box contains lots of cardboard to recycle and only a minor amount of spongy synthetic packaging, which is good to see.

Once unpacked, the next step is to assemble the frame. This requires slotting each of the three legs into the metal frame that runs beneath the desktop and bolting it firmly together. An allen key is provided though if you have your own, you'll look more like a pro. I employed the help of my partner to hold bits and help get it together, and while I'd say you could struggle through building this one solo, better to have someone help if you can.

After the legs come the feet—I'm still talking about the desk here—and following that a few mounts for the desktop. That's most of the frame together, a process that took probably around 15 minutes, though it won't feel solid until the desktop is attached, so it's onto that next.

The desktop from Flexispot is built out of a laminate chipboard, though it feels high quality. It comes in two separate parts, both of which are identical 120 x 60cm boards. With these laid on the floor, it was easy enough to flip the frame onto the desk to arrange correctly onto the board. A little surprising was the lack of screw holes for this particular desk, though it appears the desktops are not designed for any one specific desk. Some of the accessories I'll screw into the desktop later on have pre-screwed holes to line up with, but for the main desktop, it's up to me and my electric screwdriver.

There's a lot of leeway built into the E7L's adjustable frame and the process is actually not that daunting. Make sure the two desktop pieces are aligned with one another and then extend the frame to fit within 20 cm of the desktop edge. If you loosen a few bolts within the metal frame, it slides in and out easily, which makes minor adjustments to the desk's length pretty easy. A few minor adjustments later and you're ready to bash the included screws in through the holes, starting from the outside and moving inwards. 

Just note that you need to envisage the angle you need your L-shaped desk to fit, all while it's upside down. You can change the alignment of this desk to fit your space, but requires just a bit of forethought when putting it together.

Admittedly, this is still the clunkiest and most challenging part of the build, and might be tougher if you're building the desk solo. I'd also not want to do it without an electric screwdriver, which many households will have access to but some won't. If you want a simpler desk, there are those without this sort of DIY aspect to them.

This DIY mounted desktop does appeal to me, however. It's entirely reasonable to remove this desktop, should it get damaged or ruined by spicy ramen broth (it is white, after all), and replace it with your own choice of wood. You could potentially save some cash from the get-go with your own desktop, if you can find something suitable for less than the price of Flexispot's own, which costs $90/£200. An old kitchen countertop, even. 

If you pick your own desktop that will affect the overall weight this desk can support, however. A heavy piece of timber will sap from the maximum weight, and a really thin piece of timber or composite could weaken the maximum supported weight overall. Just something to consider.

With the desk mostly assembled, it's not quite stable yet. Included with the desktop are two metal plates which I fitted across the gap between the two desktop pieces, in order to strengthen it up. Which it did, considerably. With that all in place, the last job is wiring everything up.

Included in the box are cables not that dissimilar from a PCIe power cable, which run from the power supply and controller (mounted within the metal frame with a couple of screws) and out to each of the legs and the desk's handy control pad. If you've ever built your own PC, this is much, much easier than any sort of power supply runs, and you don't even have to worry about cable management. Just hook up all the cables into their appropriately shaped holes and cover up the cables with one of two metal covers.

The control pad is one of the bits with pre-drilled holes in the desktop, which makes aligning it with the edge is no issue whatsoever.

Just don't forget to plug in the external wall outlet power cable before you cover up the controller unit. But who would make that sort of mistake, eh?

All that's left is to flip the desk over—easier said than done. The desk does weigh quite a bit, and the L-shape doesn't make life any easier. Though with no scuffs, breaks or broken limbs my partner and I managed to get it onto its feet and gently rock it into place. With everything in place, I attached the cable tray (an additional £40 in the UK but included with the US model), which sort of hangs from the rear of the desk and can be mounted in a variety of places to be closest to the outlets in your home.

And hey, it worked first time. The touchscreen buttons offer presets for sitting, standing, and a couple of customisable extra profiles and there's a responsive up and down control. The desk will move from 63.5 to 128.5 cm, which even for a 6'2" man like myself is plenty of range. You could be a lot taller and still have enough movement for a comfortable and ergonomic standing position. A child lock is a helpful addition, as someone with nosy cats, and there's even a Type-A USB port built into the side. The desk claims it won't crush anything underneath it should it meet any resistance either.

The E7L offers far more usable space than the two desks I'd previously installed in this space. It's reasonably comfortable to use the entirety of the desktop at 60 cm wide, as well. The space down the left-hand side of the desk (the short bit of the 'L') makes for much less clutter on the main action zone ahead of the gaming monitors (what I call the area where my mouse and keyboard go).

Altogether, there's a lot of flexibility in the Flexispot, living up to the name, and the final desk feels plenty sturdy. Considering it's much cheaper than high-end gaming desks, such as the Secretlab Magnus Pro or Corsair Platform:6, I do like what the Flexispot offers for the money. It'll do for most home offices, even if it's not quite as premium-feeling as the Secretlab, and it makes the quality of the Corsair feel a bit lacking by comparison considering its high cost. Also, while it's more expensive than some real budget picks—our choice for the best budget gaming desk is Flexispot's E1—for a motorised L-shaped desk, it seems entirely reasonable for the quality on offer. 

Furniture is expensive, right? You want a good sofa and it can cost a bomb. Hell, even plain ol' gaming chairs are pricey. So should I be surprised that Corsair's Platform:6 gaming desk costs an unholy amount of money? Probably not. But still, that $1,800 sticker price for this top-of-the-range Creator Edition is spit take money.

The Platform:6 is Corsair's first gaming desk, and after creating some of our favourite gaming chairs I've had high hopes for its desk. And I do love a motorised sitting/standing desk. The gentle whirr of the motor, the slow ascent to a comfortable standing position, not having to be sat on my rapidly expanding posterior all day. They're great. 

And Corsair is really aiming high with the Platform:6, though there are three distinct tiers within this model: The Standard, Elevate, and Creator Edition. The first is a straight sitting desk, but it still comes with power extensions, cable tidying, cubby holes, a modular rail system and monitor arms. That's the $1,000 version, but you can also pick up the Elevate, which brings in motorised legs to give it that sitting/standing functionality for $1,400.

Then finally you have this Creator Edition which comes with everything. Most obvious is the multi frame system bolted onto the desk, offering you extra shelving and mounting points for Elgato gear, as well as a peg board to hang peripherals from when they're not in use. You also have extra expansion boards or further peg boards to bolt on to the side of the desktop itself.

I will admit it's a little overwhelming to get to grips with at first, owing to the fact it comes in eight separate boxes all of quite extreme weight. This was not going to be a quick build and it has taken me several office days of building, adjusting, and tweaking to get it perfectly setup.

Thankfully the instructions are mostly pretty clear, though I did end up having to fit, remove, and fit again the multi frame that sits atop the Platform:6 because the paper manual seemed to go against the labelling of the parts themselves. That was reader error, to be honest, but still a little frustrating.

Corsair does provide a whole host to tools and spares in the kit—I've now got more allen keys than I know what to do with, and a very handy wee ratchet—and they came in handy on a couple of occasions. 

The screws and nuts are provided in numbered paper baggies (score one for sustainability) which largely correspond to where you are in the build manual, though I did find myself missing a few important screws and solitary wingnut at one point. Though with the extras in the package I was able to substitute as necessary.

Somewhat frustratingly, for such a premium-priced desk, I found instances where the machining was not quite perfect on some elements and wasn't always able to comfortably tighten some screws so they were flush with their holes. You can feel the metal grinding at points and personally I don't love forcing things too much in a build.

Though those situations are rare, they're still there and do have an impact on your feelings of overall quality as you're battling to build the whole setup. Something else that hit hard there is the actual quality of the desktop itself. I mean, it's vast, and thick and the curved edges feel pleasing to the touch. But the fact that surface is a laminate was quickly highlighted when I realised—despite how careful I was being while putting it all together—there was a snag in the surface.

It was a circular cut that lead to a flap of the laminate standing a touch proud. Of course it's my fault, I wasn't careful enough, though I don't really know how it happened, but I would be very disappointed that it was marked so easily and so quickly if I'd spent $1,800 on the setup.

I'm a PC gamer and a notorious PC tinkerer, but the fact it's so easily marked would mean I wouldn't feel at all comfortable about putting my system on its side on top of the Platform:6 to work.

I managed to mark it again affixing one of the extra side panels to the desktop by resting the spare panel on it for a moment while searching for the hex ratchet tool I needed to mount the thing. I was even very gentle placing it there knowing that I'd already gouged it once, only to find I'd scored another mark in the surface.

Again, yes, it's my fault, but I didn't feel I was being unduly indelicate.

But now it's together and it's a lovely thing. I have a habit of cluttering my desk with a host of peripherals, cables, and assorted bits of paper, and the multi frame peg board does appeal. Hanging my headset up there, mounting some speakers on the shelves I've fixed either side of it, putting my controller in place up there, it all speaks to someone who has trouble maintaining a clear desktop.

It's also sturdy as hell. Those motorised legs betray barely a wobble when smoothly gliding up and down, nor when I'm lazily leaning against it wishing another interminable video meeting would end. It does have a sensor which slaps the motor into reverse when it comes into contact with resistance. Having a box underneath it, it reacted fairly quickly, though when I pushed Jacob under there to be my human guineapig he did confess he thought the pressure exerted upon his back from the lowering mechanism was pretty aggressive up until it gave up. 

I also appreciate the space. I currently operate on a very small desktop—a hangover from being allocated a tiny corner of my home in which to work during covid lockdowns—and the 72-inch x 30-inch of desktop real estate is incredibly pleasing to sit at. 

I'm sure I would quickly fill it up, however, though at least I could find a way to jam it onto a peg on the backboard.

The setup also comes with dual-monitor arms as standard, with standard VESA mountings to allow the greatest compatibility with screens. The arm I installed was quick to get into place though did struggle a little with the weight of the 34-inch Asus OLED display I attached to it. It did droop its head sadly when I first mounted the monitor, but tightening the fixings certainly helped.

Being part of the Corsair stable, and this being the Creator Edition, there are also a lot of fixin's for Elgato products. Whether that's a mount that sits between the dual monitor arms to affix a Facecam webcam or positions across the modular rail system or multi frame on when to fit Elgato key lights.

As the name would suggest, the Creator Edition allows you to perfectly set up your gaming desk as your studio.

It's certainly a seriously comprehensive package, and even the fixed desk has a host of mounting points and optional extras you can pick up down the line to supplement the initial desk. But I'm struggling to decide whether I would recommend it.

Our current pick as the best overall gaming desk is the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL. It's the same essential size as the Platform:6 (if a touch deeper) and is a motorised sitting/standing desk with optional accessories. That's not a cheap desk in itself, being around $1,100 if you include equivalent power and monitor arm accessories, and we love it. And it's not just because you can have LED lighting running across it.

But while it hasn't gone for the wooden desktop experience—favouring instead a faux leather desk mat—that actually works out better in the long run. The wooden laminate of the Platform:6 is easily marked, while the faux leather is a bit more hard wearing. And has the added bonus of acting like one hoofing great mouse mat.

The Secretlab certainly has more of a 'gamer' aesthetic to it, which the Corsair desk really isn't going for at all. And, to a certain extent, that's to be applauded. Without the Dave-scratched surface the wooden finish and the metal structure around it look great on the Platform:6 and I do dig the aesthetic. Maybe if it had the same surface as the Chopvalue Revive which uses recycled chopsticks, I'd be even more into it. It would certainly be more hard wearing.

I will say the Corsair is able to hold more weight than the Secretlab, and the mechanism ensures that having a PC atop it won't impact the smooth running of the desk, or give it too much weight to deal with.

But I'm always going to come back to the price point. It feels excessive. Sure, the package is great, but I have questions over the quality of the desktop and some of the machining. When a desk is the price of a pretty high-end gaming PC I don't want to have any questions over its quality. I want a perfect experience, from building to using, and I don't quite get that.

This is though Corsair's first go at a gaming desk, and it's still an impressive debut. Given the naming scheme here I wouldn't be surprised to see some more Platform desks appear in the future, and I'd love to see some more value-oriented version which brings the quality Corsair puts into its TC100 Relaxed gaming chair and offers that in an affordable desk.

Who doesn't enjoy a good sit? Just plonk yourself down into a nice cushioned office chair, hear that release of air from its foamy interior, pull up to your desk, and get gaming. Unfortunately, like so many mainstays of today's world, there's a growing body of evidence to suggest that our sedentary lifestyles aren't so healthy, and that the best way to be at a desk is to mix things up between sitting, standing, balancing on a Swedish medicine ball, you name it.

Enter Corsair. For generations, the company has been making high-end hardware both external and internal to your PC—everything from headphones and gaming mice, to RAM and PSUs—but now they've set their sights on the area around your PC with their first ever computer desk: the Corsair Platform:6.

The desk comes in fixed-height and adjustable-height (29" - 48") varieties, with an LED readout display and several memory presets, so with the press of a button you can shift the desk between sitting, standing, and, say, cycling positions if you have one of those fancy under-desk bike machines. Powered by dual electric motors, the Platform:6 will set your desk to your ideal height in seconds.

At 6ft wide, this can also be extended using this kit Platform:6 Desk - Desk Extensions and Side Peg Boards Kit, Wood, Dark Stain (corsair.com). All versions of the desk easily accommodate a dual-screen setup, and even encourage it with their dual monitor arms, which let you elegantly mount your monitors (up to 32" each, or a single 34" ultrawide) for that 'floating screen' look. The aluminium rail system is there to be mounted with myriad streamer-friendly accessories, such as lighting, cameras, boom microphones, and whatever other doodads you have to bolster your stream production. 

With a discreet cable management tray tucked away on the underside of the desk, the Platform:6 will keep your tabletop looking slick and cable-free, while in-desk USB ports stand ready to charge up your USB type-A and type-C devices.

All three editions of the desk have all the above features, but if you go for the flagship Creator Edition of the Platform:6, you'll get to enjoy the extra convenience and luxury of the Elgato Multi Frame. This impressive aluminium wall rises up behind your monitor, giving you more versatility when it comes to mounting accessories, and lets you display your game controllers, keyboards, headphones, and more for everyone to see. It really elevates your PC gaming setup, giving it the feel of a shrine to gaming as you adorn it with all your peripherals (Corsair does those too, remember?).

Coming in Black Laminate and Solid Rubberwood finishes, the Platform:6 will integrate with whatever room you put it in—whether it's a dedicated gaming den or a trendy mid-century-style lounge. You can buy the desk at the official Corsair UK and Corsair US websites, and while you're there, take a look at Corsair's other products; you're going to need accessories to fill up that Elgato Multi-Frame, after all…

To keep up with the action at Corsair, follow them on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, or tune in on YouTube and Twitch.

Sitting, standing, or somewhere in between, Corsair has got your back.

There comes a time in everyone's life when they look upon their gaming setup with fresh eyes. Usually that time comes when an outsider catches sight of your grinding dungeon. It's a similar phenomenon to that of moving house, seeing intensely personal belongings being paraded around outside and saying to yourself, yep, definitely time for a new mattress.

For me, it was having a mate round my house and seeing my gaming room through his eyes. And what I saw was hardly the stuff of an Architectural Digest tour. Dead and dying house plants arranged on a second-hand Ikea desk I'd bought on eBay during lockdown when new furniture took seven to eight years to turn up. Tea rings on my mouse mat. Dust. Cables dangling everywhere. And worst of all: a mismatched array of peripherals. Roccat, Corsair, NZXT and Logitech with their contrasting styles and clashing RGB schemes, all sitting on one sad house plant graveyard. No no no. This wouldn't do.

What should a PC gaming space actually look like in 2023, and more importantly what elements are actually important, beyond somewhere to put a mouse and keyboard? Are standing desks actually of benefit? What about ergonomic office chairs? How much light should I be getting and from where? For once, I had questions about my setup that my Instagram feed didn't have all the answers to.

First: standing desks. The purported benefits are that standing burns more calories than sitting, that it promotes good back posture, and can boost mood, focus, and circulation. That sounds pretty great to me, so I research further into it and find some pretty substantial drawbacks.

One: standing desks are quite expensive, for some reason. It's like the extra length of the legs has to be made from sheer saffron-plated gold, based on the MSRPs slapped on them. And sit-stand desks, which give you the option of both positions via a motorised adjustment to your desk height, are even pricier.

Two: well, they just don't look very nice, do they? Speaking personally, curating a dedicated gaming space in my home is about making a cosy corner where I can relax and take a break from life's duller demands. I don't want anything productive to happen in this environment. It's not going to double as my home office, so installing a totem of productivity like a standing desk in there runs contrary to the spirit of the space.

The legitimacy of those purported health benefits is also up for debate. Standing at a desk burns about 88 calories an hour, says Harvard Medical School. Sitting burns about 80. And yes, standing for extended periods can improve your posture—but only if you stand with good posture in the first place, which is a bit of a catch-22. Sitting with good posture is better than standing with poor posture, and if you're not managing that, well, at least you're sitting down.

Tables and chairs

I arrive at a traditional sitting desk with telescopic legs, generous dimensions so I can arrange some (living) house plants around my setup, and a polished concrete surface, just in case Architectural Digest ever does drop by.

There's no cable management system bundled with this desk, but since this makeover is about aesthetics as much as function I consider it mandatory to hide my cables, so I buy a management 'system' from Amazon for £15.99 and install it on the underside of my desk. And it works just great.

The chair decision is a biggie. There are so many options to go down—gaming chairs. Office chairs. Ergonomic office chairs. Ergonomic office-gaming chairs. Having recently been down a standing desk research rabbit hole, I dig deep again on the science of ergonomic interventions to improve neck and back pain. Once again the science isn't particularly robust—a recent, high-quality study of 1,000 teenagers published in the American Physical Therapy Association Journal found no link between posture and neck pain. Sleep quality, physical activity and stress levels have a much greater impact on your likelihood of neck pain than your typical seating posture, it's now thought.

Gaming chairs are even worse. The design's based around bucket seats in race cars, which were devised to keep you fixed in one place while lateral G-force is applied. No matter what that Amazon store listing is telling you about that RGB lumbar pillow, gaming chairs are no kind of solution to anything. And yes, I've seen the ones with cooling fans for your back. So go to an actual shop, sit in some chairs, and choose the one that feels the most comfortable.

Finishing touches: a deep clean of all my peripherals and components with compressed air and rubbing alcohol, and an RGB unification project—white pulse, since you ask—across my multi-manufacturer suite. New house plants. Job done. Sometimes you've got to ignore all the marketing and go for what actually works for you.

At one point back in the 1990s, I was that guy whose desk looked like a rat king’s nest of SCSI and ribbon cables, half-eaten junk food, floppy disks and burnt CDs, spare components, and discarded Vimpto fizzy drink cans. Tools, screws and other miscellanea like copies of PC Gamer magazine and half-painted Warhammer 40,000 Chaos Space Marine miniatures covered whatever bare bits of the desk threatened to peek out. Venture under the desk and you’d be met with horrors that not even the Dungeon Dimensions would house.

Over the decades since I’ve become obsessed with keeping my PC gaming desk as clean and serene as possible. The idea of sitting down to play some PC games while surrounded by mess and in constant view of clutter is now anathema to me.

It's not like I can’t bear to have anything on my desk, though. I'm not obsessed with extreme minimalism. In fact I feel every good PC gaming desk should absolutely have ornamentation, the necessary tools for a great gaming experience, and anything else that sparks joy for the individual.

But the more clutter-free I keep my desk, the more stress-free it is for me to sit at it. How do I keep it that way? I’ve got some tips.

1. The right desk itself is key

I think any flat top can make for a good PC gaming desk. You don’t need to spend big bucks on one of the best gaming desks to have a great experience. Seriously, if you want to put your monitor, mouse, keyboard and more on a simple plank of MDF wood held up by a selection of breeze blocks you found by the roadside, then go for it. No judgment at all. You absolutely don't have to buy what is marketed as a gaming desk for crazy money to have fun playing PC games. That said, today using a quality gaming desk really helps me enjoy my hobby.

I use a SecretLab Magnus Pro XL PC gaming desk and, let me tell you, it’s a lovely piece of kit. It's not just me that thinks it's lovely, either, with PC Gamer's own hardware whizzkid Jacob Ridley calling the XL "the ultimate desk for gaming and working from home." Many other reviewers agree.

For me personally, though, it ticks a lot of the boxes I consider important for a gaming desk: cable management, sit/stand flexibility, and crucially lots of space, which really helps me in my pursuit of a clean feng shui setup.

For me, desktop real estate is super important. I don't want to feel cramped and restricted in terms of what I can put on my desk and what I can use it for. For example, I used to have a triangular-shaped corner desk, and that was OK. It had multiple tiers, with a higher smaller platform reserved for a monitor, but there was hardly any room on the desk after I'd got my mouse, keyboard, speakers, mousemat, phone charger, cupholder and cup, headphones mount, ornamentation and more on it. I couldn't use the desk for anything other than computer work. There was literally no more room to do anything else on it, such as illustrating, tinkering, repairing tech, painting etc.

A wide and deep desk, though, gives you plenty of space for big monitors (I'm currently running a 49-inch 32:9 ultrawide monitor, and still have room to spare) and all the PC gaming paraphernalia you could ever want, with room left over to, say, portion off a part of your desk if you wanted to do some drawing or tinkering. Basically, what I'm saying is, a wider, deeper desk helps you lean into a cleaner aesthetic that also lets your PC gaming setup breathe and gives you versatility of use.

2. Good cable management first, wireless second

Like the cleaning of a house, cable management in PC gaming never ends. Yes, sure, there are now more ways than ever to remove cables from your gaming setup, with wireless mice, keyboards, headsets and gamepads available. However, these tend to cost notably more cash and introduce charging complexities. Also, it's just a fact that we can't get rid of monitor or speaker cables, or the necessary cables needed to power our PC gaming rigs.

I could advocate just buying as many wireless accessories as possible if you want a clean gaming aesthetic, but I think it is far more important that your gaming desk has strong cable management options for routing and hiding wires. Desks with hidden trays or channels at their rear really help here, as they let you hide wires and power strips that otherwise would be hanging down or visible under the desk, while cable ties and magnetic cable clamps will help route and keep cables in place over the desk surface.

A tip I recommend is to route as many of your wired desktop hardware through your monitor's central support pillar (which should have a cable management hole or channel, if not you've bought a bad monitor!), such as HDMI and power cables. And then have accessories that tend to live on the sides of your desk, such as speakers and even your mouse, routed through cable clamps that run directly to the rear. This is especially important for your mouse, as you don't want a tight cable to create movement issues in-game.

If the desk you're using is really basic and has none of these options, then in the past I've literally resorted to taping up cables into bundles with black masking tape, as well as using tape to affix certain core cables to the rear of my desks panelling and legs. I've also used tape to shorten the extra cabling available on power strips, winding it back in on itself, too, in order to reduce rat king-ing. Again, you don't have to spend big bucks to immediately see a cleaner desk.

3. Heavily curate toys and trinkets

I consider ornamentation and curios a key part of any PC gaming setup, as they really help you make it your own. But less is more here. It may be tempting to feature as many of your cool special edition figurines as possible but trust me, you'll have a better-looking gaming desk and area if you curate. Limit what you have on your desk, and consider displaying different sizes of ornamentation for a more natural feel.

For example, right now on my desk I've got a small, candle-powered lava lamp on the rear left, figurines of Geralt and Roach front left, a trio of small ornaments beneath my monitor, including a motorbike, waving cat and Makoto from Persona 5, but then I've purposely not got anything on the right-hand side of the desk. I've got a sweet Lego Ducati model that I could put there, but if I did that the desk would start to look cluttered in my opinion, with no breathing room. Instead, I will just swap Geralt and Roach for the bike at some point. This less is more approach applies to the walls around my setup as well. 

4. Don't overdose on RGB lighting

I know plenty of PC gamers love all-out RGB lighting, but I think in most applications I've seen it does not help elevate the gaming experience or aesthetic. You may disagree, and that's totally cool. I use some lighting in my setup, but it's almost always in very minimal, low-key amounts. My Razer mouse has a solid red lighting profile selected, for example.

But the rest of my setup is RGB-free, despite often coming with the functionality built in. So that means no glowing speakers, no pulsing monitors, no strobing desk light show, no flashing keyboard keys and no disco ball bright gaming headset. I just don't need all that visual noise in my PC gaming setup, and by stripping most of it out and then carefully curating what light sources I do have on, I can subtly enhance the feel of my setup without it being overkill.

Just because a product comes with RGBs doesn't mean you have to have them on—especially so if it's wireless, because that just means more charging.

5. Don't forget about freedom of movement

It's super important to feel comfortable when PC gaming, especially during long sessions, and the ability to alter your own position in front of your desk makes a major difference here. Many gaming desks today allow for raising and lowering manually or via motorsI think if you can introduce this into your setup then you should, even if you don't care to use your desk standing up.

More important though: even if you just have that plank of MDF on blocks as your gaming desk, ensure you've got real estate under the desk to move your legs, stretch out, or position yourself differently. Loads of desk setups I've seen provide a very narrow window for your legs, often boxed in by drawers and a gaming rig. I don't know about you, but that is not an aesthetic or ergonomic reality I like.

Just like on top of the desk, what you're trying to avoid here is a lack of space as well as a cluttered appearance. Under desk cavities are often overlooked, though, with gamers taking up valuable (in the sense of feng shui and body health) space that could be enhancing their experience. 

The Autonomous site says the SmartDesk Core was "Bought by 2,100+ Microsoft employees". That's almost 10% of the company, if my calculations are correct. And whether there's an entire floor at Microsoft headquarters rocking these babies, or a large chunk of the hivemind decided to go for the same desk for their home offices, I figured there's got to be something in it. So what can this desk offer that other standing desks can't? And what's so smart about it?

I've been sent the middling model. At 53 x 29 inches, it sits between a diddy 52 x 24-inch version, and a ridiculous 70.5 x 30-inch XL version. As a medium form-factor, the images on the site really don't do it justice. There's a great deal of real-estate here, more than enough for a couple of gaming monitors and my mid-tower PC.

There are a few frame colour options all for the same price, so you can mix and match them with the different worktop styles. The full standard size desk along with a black or white worktop retails at $499 for the medium, $399 for the smaller, and $849 for the large. The real wood look is going to set you back a little more, with white oak and walnut pushing the medium model up to $549, while the bamboo and dark bamboo versions add a full $150 dollars premium on top of the base colours.

Because, uh, bamboo is in right now?

As for the UK, the options are a bit more limited. Only the medium desk is available for £450 in black and white, or £498 for the wood look. No bamboo here, sadly.

According to Autonomous "Even a complete beginner can have the whole thing put together in about 30 minutes." It took me more like an hour by myself, and although the instructions admittedly warn that the process is a two person job at times, I feel my tardiness was partly down to getting stuck on the first instruction step. It wasn't worded all that well, asking me to simply get it in the "proper position". The illustrations didn't help at all, so I had to really pause to think about which holes went where.

Moreover, aligning everything was a little harder than it should've been. Even once I'd deciphered the instructions, some of the holes were a bit misaligned.

Despite some of the screws having gone in at a slight angle it's now finally together and stands mightily in my spare room, and I can't fault it for material quality. None of the screws stripped as I fought with them, the vinyl that covers the warp-proof MDF is thick and not easily picked off, and the frame is sturdy even on thick carpet. Bashing into it with my chair doesn't send it rocking and spill my coffee everywhere, which is always appreciated.

Coiling the cables up underneath, I was able to neatly tuck them between the frame and the motor unit, and the included cable ties made it super easy to tidy everything up. While that and the two chrome wire holes on either side of the desk do win some points for cable management, it doesn't quite measure up to something like the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL's magnetic cable management solution. That said, cable management on a standing desk can cause problems when shifting positions—just when you think you've left enough slack, there go your fancy speakers.

Either way, the underside looks relatively neat from the get-go, the Walnut top is polished to perfection, and the corners have a gorgeous curve to them. The top edge isn't too sharp either, something the Arozzi Arena desk I'm now using sans mousepad does suffer from.

Overall the SmartDesk Core is a super sleek and stylish desk. It's certainly pretty enough to give the luxury $1,450 BDI Stance on our best gaming desk guide a run for its money. And while it doesn't come prebuilt, the SmartDesk Core comes in at less than half the price for a much larger model, even with the fancy walnut wood top. When it looks this good with a saving like that, I'm willing to overlook some holes in the featureset. 

And yet, the SmartDesk Core manages to match the Stance at every level, only without the premium price tag.

The main thing I'm stumbling over is the name. I've spent the week trying to understand what exactly is smart about the desk. Other than remembering four distinct heights, it doesn't really fit the modern understanding of the word. There's no AI involved, nor is there an automatic collision sensing feature on the medium sized model. The company's other model, the Connect, does come with Bluetooth capabilities which seems to justify the nomenclature a little more, but otherwise don't get caught up too much on the name. 

The SmartDesk core is a fantastic, stylish desk for the price, and although it was a little awkward to put together, and doesn't quite match the savings on something like the Flexispot EN1B—which does have a smart anti-collision feature—it's still worth a look as a cheaper alternative to the BDI Stance in the luxury standing desk market. Maybe not so much if you're a bamboo liker, or after the vast XL model, but I'd certainly pay the $499 for the standard model in its basic colours.

Heck, I'd even pay that little extra Autonomous is asking for the walnut look.

It's not every day a PC gaming hardware company has to tell us not to use its products for hurting people or committing arson. Still, here we are today: Razer just announced its first-ever glass gaming mouse pad designed to give the smoothest mouse glides with zero resistance, and it comes with just that kind of warning. 

The Razer Atlas is a tempered glass gaming mouse mat. It's a pretty sizable pad at 17.72" x 15.75" with a 5mm thickness. There's no RGB, shockingly, but it's got a nice premium look and feel to it.

A hard mouse surface like glass is typically good for PC gamers whose playstyle leans toward quick movements for twitch shooters because there's less resistance than cloth and even hard plastics. Since it's glass, the surface will always remain consistently smooth (assuming it's clean), whereas cloth or plastic mats can wear and tear over time. 

I really like glass gaming mouse pads though my issue is they always tend to be a little loud when you frantically start swiping away. Razer claims that the Atlas is "specially treated to allow for mouse swipes that are quieter mouse movements than average glass mats," which we will look out for when we get one in for testing. 

Glass mouse pads tend to smudge pretty easily, so you must ensure you have a microfiber cloth ready to remove any gamer funk accumulated during playtime. They also don't come cheap, with the Razer Atlas costing around $99. 

As I mentioned earlier, the Razer Atlas also comes with bizarre caution warnings on how not to use it on its product page. I'm fairly certain it's a joke, but what if it isn't?

According to Razer's illustration, you shouldn't use the glass gaming mat for starting fires as if it were magnifying glass aimed at the sun. Second, the Razer Atlas shouldn't be used to block the sun's harsh ultraviolet rays, which I'm assuming is to keep from setting yourself on fire. Finally, and perhaps most important, Razer would like you to not clobber anyone over the head with the Atlas glass gaming mat.

Considering how thick and hard tempered glass is, you could seriously damage someone's noggin.

The Razer Atlas is available now in black for $99, though you can also preorder the mouse pad in white, which ships next week on March 24, for non-head-bashing and non-fire-setting purposes. But honestly, who's going to stop you? I'm not your dad. 

When working from home  a standing desk is a seriously useful piece of kit. Not only can you use it to help give your day some variety with the sitting and then the aforementioned standing, but they also provide options in other ways. Changing the height can make it easier to fit storage like draws, or even perhaps your weirdly huge tower PC, underneath your desk. I've been sold on the standing desk life for a while now, and a carbon negative one like what the Fnatic x ChopValue Collaboration is definitely worth giving a look to.

Most of the deal with the Fnatic x ChopValue Revive Pro desk is that it's made out of recycled chopsticks. It's an eco-friendly sorta desk, you know? I love that you can see that in its finish. All the splinted different colours of wood come together to make a nice sort of butcherblock styled top but with a lot more interest. 

When purchasing the desk you can choose what logos you want to have emblazoned on your chop top. It comes with ChopValue and Fnatic logos embedded into the wood, as well as a count of how many chopsticks were used at the far left of the desk. At the front to the right is a special spot, just for you to make your own mark. Mine is fittingly branded with the PC Gamer logo, and it looks far cooler than I expected.

In use, the tougher feeling desktop adds a nice boost of confidence, so I don't worry about moving things around so much. I've tried to scratch it to no avail, which is definitely nicer than accidentally causing damage. The desk controls for raising and lowering the table top is almost identical to most standing desk models and allows for your up down, and programmable levels of customisation. This is all a fairly standard affair from what I've seen and works as expected.

Though I'm going to say that one of the other standing desks I have plenty of experience with, the Vari Electric Standing Desk, beats out the Fnatic x ChopValue Revive desk when it comes to price. The Pro ChopValue desk model I'm reviewing has a desktop that measures 65cm x 117.5cm for $1,075 USD. That's a little bit smaller than the similar Vari model which is sub-$1,000. That's not a huge price difference, but it's still noticeable. And for those of us in Australia that price difference gets much higher with the Vari about half the price of a ChopValue option. 

The Vari was also a bit easier to put together than the Fnatic x ChopValue Revive standing desks as it came mostly prebuilt with just the legs and table top separate. The Fnatic took a bit longer to piece together, but its parts were easier to wield thanks to being in smaller chunks. The top of the Revive was also packed ultra securely with many layers to buffer against damage. I dented the Vari desktop moving a monitor on its veneer, but haven't had that issue yet with the Revive. This is important given half of what you're paying for in these desks is their lovely customisable desktop.

Generally the ChopValue desk offers a much more natural wood finish than the Vari's topping, as well as being a bit more unique in aesthetic, especially with all the engraving. Some of which you can even add yourself.

The ChopValue does move just a touch bit smoother and quieter than the Vari, and there's a handy cable hole at the back which lines up nicely with the included cable organiser that attaches to the bottom of the desktop to make things a bit easier to organise. It's a very small surface so the ability to keep as much of your kit off this desk is super important, and any little bit to help with that is appreciated.

The hardest part of this desk, aside from its sturdy top and metal legs, has to be the price. With most of us out here just trying to survive capitalism, this desk isn't the best bang for buck for all consumers. But if you've got the cash there's a great initiative here behind this very good desk, plus a few noticeable quality boosts in there too. It just depends on how much more you're paying for those improvements in your region as to whether or not it's worth sticking to the chop.

I'm a big fan of teeny tiny mini-ITX builds that hide away your PC, but I also adore a loud and proud RGBehemoth. The choice between minimalistic style vs bright lights and displayed power is one of the hardest to make, and finding middle ground is sort of besides the point. Or that's what I thought, but it turns out there are some masters of the middle ground out there, and one such build is this simply beautiful glass desk feature.

Kumag1989 posted their glorious new build on the Nvidia Reddit which shows off one of the nices—while still achievable looking—in-desk gaming PCs I've ever seen. Rather than going small to try to fit everything into a slim build, they've gone bigger leaving a beautiful airy looking glass display, complete with a lovely fake plant. It's wonderfully clean and relaxing while still offering tonnes of usable desk space on top.

The entire glass surrounds with matching white lit fans and water cooling really makes the whole PC look more like a purposeful piece of art on display, rather than a beastly gaming machine. The square structure complete with center plant gives off futuristic zen garden vibes. 

Everything is laid out beautifully thanks to all the space used, so it feels more relaxed than cramming components into a small space. Instead here we can see everything at work and it's simply lovely.

Further down in the reddit post Kumag1989 posts the specs used, which starts unsurprisingly with a custom built table. It's a shame that we haven't really seen much of a rise of premade in-case table builds given just how damned nice they can look.

It also uses a custom water cooling loop solution, but that's fairly common with fancy PC builds, and there are plenty of options on the market. If you've got the skills and materials to make something like this though, the rest of it is mostly up for purchase as is.

The guts of this beauty are an Intel Core i9 11900K paired with an RTX 4090 so it's definitely not just skin deep here. This is seated on a Z590 Aorus Pro ATX motherboard, with 32GB of RAM. This would be a very sweet piece of kit to game on, that's if you can tear yourself away from just admiring the build for long enough.

finally_my_cablemod_arrived_hopefully_these from r/nvidia

There are some downsides to this beauty though, as Kumag1989 admits in the thread. Having so much glass is just ripe for fingerprints, and a lot of care has to be taken around it. Doesn't matter how badly you get whooped in Overwatch 2 by an overpowered Sojourn main, there's no rage quit table slams with this bad boy around. That being said, I think looking at this beautiful build would be more than enough to calm me down even after the hardest loss.

The best gaming desk can quite literally change the way you game. At its simplest, a suitable gaming desk should give you plenty of space for your monitor and peripherals, all on a stable and adjustable frame, set at an ergonomically sound height. Pair it with the best gaming chair, and your friends will marvel at your superior setup.

Choosing a desk to suit you isn't always an easy task, but we reckon the best gaming desk is the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL for its laundry list of incredible features and great pricing. When choosing a gaming desk, ask yourself if you are looking to sit, stand, or both. There are benefits to spending some time on your feet, so a motorized standing desk, such as the Magnus Pro, might be a good fit for you.

If your budget isn't going to stretch to the pricey ol' Secretlab, the best budget motorized desk is the Autonomous SmartDesk 5, and the overall best budget desk is the Ikea Utespelare. That's a solidly built, spacious desk that eschews fancy features and gimmicks to keep the price ultra-low. Our other picks for the best gaming desk are just a scroll away, so keep reading below.

The quick list

The best gaming desk

What makes the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL the best gaming desk? It's surprisingly innovative. Desks can be boring things, let's face it, but Secretlab has mixed things up to create something that redefines what you expect from what otherwise might be a plain old table for your gaming gear.

The Magnus Pro XL is one of the largest desks we've tested in recent times, coming in at 177 x 80 cm / 70 x 32 inches. This is also the heaviest, at 33 kg / 73 lbs for the desk's surface panel alone. It's no surprise, really, as this desk not only has a heavy-duty metal frame but two integrated motors.

The Magnus Pro XL can lift a gigantic 120 kg / 265 lbs in gross weight (including the weight of the desk itself) up to a height of 125 cm / 49 inches. That's plenty of range to stand up for work during the day and lounge back to game during the night. That also makes the Magnus Pro XL the best standing desk for our money. Why buy something that's purely a standing desk when you can have both options in one?

There's a lot of cable management at work here that contributes to the Magnus Pro XL looking clean and well-designed, and as a result, the rest of your setup too. However, it must be noted that the magnetic cable ties are not included in the standard price. They'll set you back an additional $25/£25 for a set of three or $49/£45 for the same, with two additional cable management sheaths and some handy fastening straps.

One accessory also worth investing in is the dual-monitor arm attachment. Each arm supports monitors up to 34 inches in size, although it all attaches via a single unit. The trouble is, it's pricey itself. $249 worth of pricey, in fact.

Still, what really stands out here beyond the innovative features is the sheer quality of the design. This desk doesn't just look good; it feels built to last, well-thought-out, and luxurious. Which it really should do, given the price.

How much for just the desk? Well, it's not cheap: $949, before accessories. But what you're getting here is something that, despite the cost, offers a luxury desk experience that'll follow you from PC to PC. That sitting/standing functionality is a real boon, and the meticulous design, in combination with the excellent flexibility it offers, makes it stand out among gaming desks. Far above most, in fact.

The Secretlab Magnus Pro XL is the best gaming desk of them all—it's simply more flexible, better designed, and better built than any other. It's also a standing desk and a sitting desk all in one, and the best at both.

Read our full Secretlab Magnus Pro XL review.

The best budget gaming desk

The best budget gaming desk should tick off some important key things—lots of real estate for monitors and mouse movement, integrated cable management, and a very affordable price tag. Ikea's Utespelare gaming desk hits all three with ease, so it's not hard to see why it's our recommendation.

According to online translators, utespelare is Swedish for 'outfield player', but there's nothing outfield about this desk. You're getting a very solid structure (powder-coated steel frame, topped with an ABS-layered particleboard) that's straightforward to build.

It's also very spacious, with the top panel's dimensions (63 x 31 inches / 160 x 80 cm) being much larger than other budget gaming desks we've seen. The legs are height-adjustable, but it's not something you can easily do on the fly, and you have to do it when there's nothing on the desk.

With a maximum height of 31 inches / 78 cm, it's not the tallest desk out there, so if you're long-legged, then you might find it a bit of a squeeze getting your knees underneath. The A-frame legs also stick out a bit more than you might like, too.

But at $270/£129, these are very minor niggles, and there are other features that more than make up for them. For example, the mesh 'hammock' hanging underneath the rear of the desk is very spacious and perfect for tucking cables and extension boards out of sight.

If you want motorized height-adjustable legs or RGB lights a-go-go, then you'll need to look elsewhere and spend more money. But for sheer value for money, the best budget gaming desk is easily the Ikea Utespelare, even if it is an 'outfield player'.

Read our full Ikea Utespelare gaming desk review.

The best midrange gaming desk

If you want the best midrange gaming desk, then look no further than the Arozzi Arena. It's monstrously huge, with a shallow curve that lets you nestle into a glorious amount of monitor, keyboard, and mouse space. Best of all, it comes with an affordable price tag, coming in well under that of Magnus Pro XL's.

The biggest selling point of the Arozzi Arena is the mouse pad material, which covers the entirety of the desk's surface. It's honestly quite startling to see at first, but once you have your first whoopsie with a drink, you'll discover the benefits of its hydrophobic coating.

Watching liquids ball up is mesmerising at first, but a word of caution: The coating is surprisingly fragile when it comes to being cleaned. Use anything but the mildest of detergents, and you'll wave goodbye to that lovely surface.

Before you get to the joys of the full-desk mouse mat, you'll need to construct it. And my goodness, is this thing heavy. You may need an extra pair of sturdy hands just to move the boxes about. The manual's adorable illustrations make the process streamlined, but the machining quality is somewhat variable, and you may find some misaligned holes or parts not sitting as flush as you'd expect.

However, once it's all put together, the Arena is very sturdy. It's a bit of a distinctive looker, it must be said, and that aesthetic isn't going to suit everybody. But it's the day-to-day hard-wearing nature of this desk, in combination with its size, that really makes it stand out.

Arozzi recommends a rug or carpet placement, as opposed to a hard surface floor, though we found that while it settles nicely into a thick carpet, there was still a fair amount of travel when pushing up to get out of the chair.

The built-in mesh hammock for cable management, however, is fantastic and makes it easy to keep those pesky cables tidy. If you don't bump into any dodgy screw holes and you have the space for it, you'll love having the vast desk area that the Arena offers.

You'll be able to fit a gaming tower up top comfortably, alongside a couple of monitors, handheld PCs, coffee cups, open notebooks, shelves, speakers, microphones, lamps, etc. You get the picture. It's big!

But size isn't everything, as we've often been told. Here, you're also getting a hydrophobic surface, some genuinely good build quality, and a desk that stands apart from the rest. You could always check out our best gaming desk overall, the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL, which is even larger. But if your budget can't stretch that far and a big, simple desk that'll last is all you need, the Arozzi Arena is the best midrange gaming desk of them all.

The best luxury gaming desk

The Grovemade Desk is our choice for the best luxury desk due to a truly lovely look, some clever cable management, a smooth motor, and a few smart features. It will cost you a pretty penny (several thousand pretty pennies in fact), but the quality is undeniable.

Available in solid wood and plywood models (with a $700 difference between the two types and six looks altogether), the Grovemade looks lovely, with accompanying metal coming in a different colour depending on your wood type. Oak and Walnut, being darker woods, come with a black metal base and trimming, whereas the lighter maple has a silver-toned stand.

One of the Grovemade desk's many secret weapons is its hidden drawer. You can smoothly slide open the shelf underneath, which is furnished with small compartments to hold wires and accessories, and the back of the drawer has a series of holes, which means you can potentially feed through a laptop charger or USB dock.

This shelf is curved, so it's bigger at the back than the front, which makes it feel a tad more hidden than a traditional desk shelf. You would struggle to get an 18-inch laptop in it, thanks to both width and height requirements, but it's a great spot to throw some wires in, or hide away a little media device that you can then hook through the back of the shelf to plug into a monitor on top of the desk.

Thanks to an almost 300 lbs weight limit, you won't struggle to fit a PC and multiple monitors on this desk, and a built-in six-outlet surge protector (with a handful of USB ports) should be able to power your gaming setup too. We did notice that cunkier cables struggle to fit through the holes in the back of the shelf, so some manual cable management is required.

Not only is the Grovemade desk smartly put together, strong, and comes with neat cable management, but it's also a standing desk, and the motor is super smooth. You can change the position of the panel that controls the height to sit at the edge of the desk, where it's easy to see, or under the drawer, tucked and hidden away. If you want to, you can give your gaming setup a very minimal look thanks to all these smart little features.

We did notice, when building, that we managed to scratch the underside of the wood, as building it requires you to flip the entire desk. This does mean the wood can get scuffs, though this only happened on the underside during building, where you don't traditionally look, and more careful hands can avoid scratches entirely. The Grovemade desk is a luxury desk that truly feels the luxury part. When we unboxed it, we thought the shine of such a pretty thing would fade pretty quickly, and it somehow still hasn't.

Read our full Grovemade desk review.

The best L-shape gaming desk

Make the most out of an awkward corner with the best L-shape gaming desk, the Flexispot E7L. For what feels like a fair price, you can score a motorized adjustable sit/stand desk with loads of room.

The build is best completed with two people—and if you get through most of it solo and think you're so tough, just wait until you try to flip this L-shaped desk over onto its feet. Who's laughing now, anonymous internet user? That being said, what you end up with after all that effort is worth it, and it's not like L-shaped desks are known for their easy build. You want a big L, and you want a good one. You'll find it here.

The E7L is rock-solid once it's flipped onto its feet. It comes with three motorized legs, which keep it stable and allow it to lift a lot of weight. Up to 150 kg / 330 lbs total, inclusive of the desktop.

Speaking of which, you're able to pick any desktop of your choosing for the E7L. Not just chipboard and wood offerings on the Flexispot website, either. So long as you follow the included guidance on how to screw a desktop to the frame, you can get any piece of wood you like to fit.

The desktops are sold separately from the frame, which means if you know someone chucking out some old kitchen countertops, you can save yourself a little cash. Flexispot's own toppers are $90, which is pretty reasonable, but if you want to get creative with the surface, then that option is here, with a bit of DIY ingenuity.

The sit/stand functionality is provided by a mysterious black box stuffed out of view beneath the desk and controlled by a lovely touchpad you can mount wherever the provided cables will allow. The touchscreen controls have presets for sitting, standing, and even some customisable profiles, so once you've found exactly the right height, this desk will remember it for you.

A desk that memorises your perfect height requirements. What a time to be alive. In all seriousness, though, what you end up with here is something that's very sturdy, adjustable, large enough to fit plenty of equipment on, and sized in a way that you can stick it in the corner and make the most of space you wouldn't normally easily be able to use.

The exact form, size and layout of the Flexispot E7L is loosely up to you, within reason, and that's why we really rate this as the best L-shape gaming desk. It's everything you need, nothing you don't.

Read our full Flexispot E7L review.

The best budget motorized gaming desk

The Autonomous SmartDesk 5 may not be the catchiest of names for a product, but it's absolutely the best budget motorized desk you can buy. Put simply, it's an impressively sturdy, electrically adjustable desk for anyone looking to upgrade their home/gaming/office setup. All for a very reasonable price.

With a height range of 28.7 inches up to 46.8 inches, the SmartDesk 5 covers pretty much every comfortable sitting and standing position. It moves up and down easily, with a handful of height presets, plus your usual up and down buttons, and it can auto-detect when it should stop moving. These are all pretty standard features for a motorized desk, but considering the price, here, delivering the norm is what you want.

We did find, in our test model, that the package wasn't necessarily up to scratch. In shipping, the side of the table clearly received quite a heavy bump, and the packaging didn't adequately protect it.

Despite this, our Jacob built two separate gaming rigs on this desk, and it didn't receive a single blemish. That's a pretty solid result, and a testament to its materials. You don't, however, want to keep multiple rigs on it at a time.

Not only does it not have the space to accommodate multiple monitors, mice, keyboard, mats, and whatever else you keep on the desk, but its weight limit is pretty low. It's not so low that you should be particularly worried, but we certainly wouldn't recommend hopping on it to change a lightbulb. Okay, we wouldn't recommend that anyway, but doubly so here.

This all makes it very much a solo desk, and luckily, it's easy enough to construct that you can build it alone, too. A short instruction manual is included, though you could reasonably figure it out with minimal desk-building experience.

It sits pretty after being set up and even comes with decent cable management. If you're in the market for something affordable that can be used both standing and sitting down, the SmartDesk 5 is the best out there.

Read our full Autonomous SmartDesk 5 review.

The best compact gaming desk

The Corsair Platform:4 is cheaper, easier to build, and in our experience, less scratch-prone than the much-larger Platform:6, making it our pick for the best compact desk right now.

First things first, though, this desk is quite expensive at MSRP. Going all the way up to $1,000, it's a bit rich for most, given its size and function. However, since monitoring its stock, we've seen it drop all the way down to a downright reasonable $650. We'd advise hanging out for a sale and picking up this little beauty then.

Once you do, however, you will spot it's a lovely bit of kit. The version with a wood top and white legs that we tested looks great, and comes with a small shelf underneath for handy cable management. It also took around half an hour to get unpacked, built, and stood up in its place. We did notice shared instructions between the Platform:6 and Platform:4 overcomplicated the process, but it was still a fairly intuitive build regardless.

As well as being a compact desk, this one comes with a brace at the back with a monitor arm on, which helps make more space for your mouse and keyboard. Despite being compact, this all adds to give you a little more room to play with.

We were pleasantly surprised by how strong the legs and motor mechanism are on this desk, and we found it to be just as impressive as the larger and more expensive Platform:6 desk. It can go from sitting to standing mode super smoothly, which means a coffee cup won't take a spill as you do so.

If something did crash onto this tabletop, however, we have some confidence it wouldn't immediately break apart. We didn't make a single dent or make a scratch on the table in our testing period, and we couldn't say the same for its more expensive sibling.

If you plan on sharing this desk, you may struggle somewhat as the motor only has two presets. Given you will want to set these to your sitting and standing position, you've gotta hope your partner is the same height, should you want to take turns working on it.

This is, at MSRP, an expensive desk, but it looks and feels it, being both sturdy and coming with a few smart additions. At its regularly discounted price, however, it almost becomes a downright bargain, and the best compact choice out there right now.

Read our full Corsair Platform:4 review

The best convertible standing desk

You may not want to replace your office furniture completely—or even be able to if it's not yours—which makes a converter a great option. And the VariDesk Pro Plus just so happens to be the best convertible desk right now. What do we mean by a convertible desk? Well, stick it on top of a regular old table, and you've got a standing desk. Ta-da!

It's available in multiple sizes, so there's one for almost all standard desks, and it immediately allows you to switch from sitting to standing. The Pro Plus is also one of the simplest ways to get yourself a standing desk, as it requires no setup and doesn't impact the desktop you place it on.

The VariDesk Pro Plus comes ready to roll straight out of the box. All you need to do is put it on top of your current desk, and you're good to go. You'll need some strength to get it there, though, as at 16 kg it's not light.

Once set up, though, what might be an issue for some instantly becomes a distinct advantage, as it's an impressively sturdy solution at each of the 11 height settings.

The VariDesk isn't motorized, but it uses a spring-loaded mechanism with twin handles to make it easy to move from sitting to standing quickly. The action is smooth and doesn't require tremendous force to shift, even when multiple monitors and peripherals sit on top of it.

Speaking of which, there's room to run a pair of monitors on the top section, with the extended lower section ideal for a mouse and keyboard. However, it's not ideal for a mouse because the surface does not play nicely with most sensors. We had to jury rig our shaped mouse mat to get a decent experience, but the two-tier stepping still makes for an excellent desktop.

Quirks aside, the VariDesk Pro Plus is ideal for anyone needing the flexibility of a standing/sitting desk solution without the space, funds, or opportunity to go all out with a new desk. If you do have some spare funds to put down on a desk that can do it all, we'd highly recommend checking out the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL, as it can be raised and lowered into whatever sitting or standing position you require.

If you want something cheaper that'll convert what you've already got, though, that'll be this. The VarDesk Pro Plus is the best way of standing at your PC for cheap and the best convertible desk overall.

Also tested

Best gaming desk FAQ

Surprisingly innovative. That's how I'll sum up the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL. I've never been one to look for much in a gaming desk—I ask only for a flat plane on which to sit my monitors, keyboard, and mouse—yet the Magnus Pro XL has so thoroughly impressed me that I'm starting to reconsider my whole opinion of what a desk should be.

I'm now firmly in the camp that a desk should be absolutely massive. The Magnus Pro XL is the largest desk I've ever used personally, having only recently found the space for such a behemoth, coming in at 177cm x 80cm. This is also the heaviest desk I've ever had to move solo by far, at 32.9kg for the desk alone. The mostly metal frame of the Magnus Pro XL, explains some of that, though it's the two included motors, one integrated into each of the legs, which add a whole lot of mass to the equation.

I don't have an exact weight for the completely assembled desk with accessories, but the two boxes the Magnus Pro XL comes in (which includes the Magpad Desk Mat but no other accessories) weigh ~77.8kg (171.5lb) combined.

But that's what makes this the Magnus Pro XL: the desk's adjustable sit/stand functionality. The standard Magnus doesn't offer this. The Magnus Pro XL is capable of lifting 120kg in gross weight (87.1kg if you subtract the weight of the metal desk itself) up to a height of 125cm. It sits only 65cm off the ground at its lowest.

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To control the Magnus there's a control panel integrated into the front right of the desk. It's pretty easy to get to grips with. You can pre-program three heights to one of three hotkeys on the desk for quick adjustments or you can manually tap the up and down arrows for a little more granular control. The best bit, however, is the on/off switch, which simply prevents any accidental bum bumps or hand taps from moving the desk at all.

The sit/stand functionality on the Magnus Pro XL is quite simply one of the best out there. The motors are whisper quiet and they move with a liquid action. The fact they gradually come to a halt means you don't have to worry about what's on the desk jolting to a stop as you adjust it, even a cup of coffee or glass of water.

Another thing I've come to re-evaluate since the Magnus XL is how a desk should handle cable management. The foremost impressive thing about the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL is how sharp and clean-cut it makes your PC setup look. That's not through a lack of cables on my part, of which I have arguably too many, but for the Magnus Pro XL's clever magnetic cable management accessories and discrete cable tray. These hide my gluttony of USB, audio, and power cables out of sight.

My favourite of which is the compact cable tidy: a small block of metal with a couple of strong magnets within that securely fixes my cables in place. This has proven especially useful for my stack of audio devices, including DAC, amp, and microphone interface. Whereas the front-facing ports on these would usually spill the cables out towards my keyboard, I have neatly redirected these off to the side using only a single, magnetic cable tidy.

Though it must be noted that these magnetic cable ties are not included within the cost of the desk itself, and instead can be purchased for $25 for a set of three or for $49 as a set of three alongside two cable management sheaths and a stack of fastening straps. If, like me, you have plenty of velcro cable ties already, I'd recommend just picking up the three cable tidies on their own; the sheaths are decent, though may not be as handy depending on how you set up the desk with your PC.

This is the thing: the Secretlab Magnus Pro XL requires some added expense to make it as sleek an experience as it should be.

If you're tucking your PC under the desk you might want to consider extra lengthy DisplayPort, HDMI, or USB cables to make sure you have the length for the desk's sitting and standing positions. That's easier said than done, and I had to buy some new 3-metre DisplayPort and USB upstream cables to cope. 

If that's not what you're after, you could mount your PC on the desk or consider Secretlab's PC Mount ($89), which hangs on the underside of the desk and offers a place to load your PC into. That means it can move up and down with the rest of the desk, cable runs be damned. My Corsair 5000T case rules that one out—the max load for the kit is 15kg and that case alone (sans any components) weighs 14.53kg.

The other extras to consider include the MagRGB Smart Lighting Edition lighting strip ($79) and the Magnetic Headphone Hanger ($29), which are slightly less essential, if quite appealing add-ons. I particularly like the robust, flexi-feel to the lighting strip, which is powered by Nanoleaf for in-sync RGB goodness. Though there is also a cheaper option I haven't tried out for $59.

The one accessory I really do think is worth investing in is the dual monitor arm. It's a single unit that clamps firmly onto the desk, between the hinged cover and the desk itself, and it offers sprawling reach for both the 28-inch and 32-inch monitors I've got in right now. They're highly adjustable with just a couple of turns of the included tool, and they're easy to switch up when you shift from sitting to standing. This accessory will set you back $249, however.

None of these accessories are absolutely essential but they absolutely make the desk feel more deserving of its considerable price tag. At $949 for the Magnus Pro XL alone, you're looking at over $1,000 for the all-in setup I've been using for this review, and that's the version that makes 

Ultimately I have to ask myself would I be happy with this desk if I'd paid that sort of sum for it? And, yes, I would. Though it is a definite luxury to be able to allocate that much of your budget to a component in no way connected to the performance of your gaming PC. The main reason I feel it worth doing is more because I feel I fit into a group of people most likely to benefit from an investment in a high quality sit/stand desk alongside an ergonomic gaming chair: those that work primarily from home.

The option to change up my workspace with the push of a button is more worth it for me than, say, someone who is primarily using this desk for gaming in the evening after work. If that functionality isn't to your liking, a lot of what makes the Magnus Pro XL great is similarly found on the Magnus for over $350 less.

You also can't ignore the many motorised sit/stand desks going for a lot less money, some around the price of the non-motorised Magnus. Really you're paying for the attention to detail and clever design with these Secretlab models, and for that they're firmly planted in the premium market.

Though I really am impressed with what the Magnus Pro XL offers, as it's much more than anything I had expected from a desk previously. To turn a slab of metal into a clever combination of cable management and functionality, one which offers both function and form, it's impressive. I didn't expect to be blown away by a desk, of all things, but here we are, and I am.

When I started my career as a games then tech journalist nigh-on two decades ago, I never thought I'd spend so much time writing about furniture. I'm no interior designer and sticking a couple of LED panels on the wall is about all you're going to get out of me as far as DIY is concerned. And yet PC gaming has changed so much that even chairs and desks are created with your computer habits in mind.

We write about gaming chairs a fair bit, but desks less so. Though we've tested our share of gaming desks, and even PCs within desks, we haven't really had smart desks. Which is kind of what Lumina is promising with the first programmable desk and it looks as sleek and shiny as it does largely impractical for my own personal work style.

But with an inlaid OLED panel in the desktop I can't help but want it.

It's a way off, however, as the Lumina Desk has only been announced and is still very much in the prototype stage. Final release of the ~$1,500 motorised desk is scheduled for the second half of next year, though we are told that it does already have the OLED screens working in its prototype models.

It is obviously that 24-inch OLED panel in the middle of the desktop that makes it so damned sci-fi, but it's probably not going to work in the way you might think. When I first saw the pictures I was expecting some kind of Star Trek Next Gen touchscreen console—like some tablet on motorised legs—but it's not strokeable and is only configurable from a desktop app.

Thankfully it's still resistant to fingerprints, with a 1200cd/m² peak luminance and an oleophobic coating. Though my phone still has that and is grubby as all hell.

From there, Lumina promises, you'll be able to configure it to display a "wide array of integrated apps like Google Calendar, Instagram, Zoom, Slack, Robinhood, Twitter, and many more."

So, if you were hoping for some touch-sensitive second-screen action, where you could drop a web-page, or video while you game on your main device, you might be disappointed.

But Lumina still wants to riff on the Star Trek analogy: "The Lumina Desk goes boldly where no other desk has gone before. As the first programmable desk, and compatible with Windows and Mac, the Lumina Desk possesses its own operating system, which we call Lumina OS. We also are offering a software development kit (SDK) for developers to build on our platform."

Lumina's also kitting the desk out with a bunch of hidden power sockets, with six USB Type-C sockets and a pair of wireless charging surfaces built into the unit, capable of delivering some 200W of charging power.

There are some more dubious features Lumina is planning on baking into its desk, however. Personally I'm not convinced that having a motorised desk that goes from sitting to standing on a schedule is that great an idea. I get the health benefits of ensuring you alter your working position throughout the day, but having my desk suddenly lurch up or drop away doesn't fill me with wonder.

Though maybe having my desk remind me to take a break might be nice. "Hey Dave, go grab a coffee. Treat yourself."

But as much as I'm into the idea of this sleek, screen-ladened motorised desk, I do not possess the habits that such a workplace surface demands. I'm messy, and my desk is always cluttered with cables, a mic, bits of various computers, different mice, and pens. Inexplicable pens. I don't write anything down anymore, yet there are still pens. No paper. Just pens.

Any super-handy bright OLED panel telling me what my work schedule is looking like that day, or feeding me yet more ever-changing next-gen GPU specs via TweetDeck, is going to be buried beneath the detritus of my cluttered working habits. And any reminders to take a break every now and then are likely to be muffled by the discarded packaging of key switches, gaming mice, or maybe a random laptop.

Red Dead Redemption 2 may have won Steam's game of the year back in 2020 but it's definitely not everyone's shot of whiskey. While many love it for the cowboy adventure story with plenty of twists and turns others found it a bit of a slog. After all, it's really not a game that respects your time with plenty of long animations and grindy hunting as well as drawling conversations. For some, like myself it just was a bit too slow paced to enjoy.

This might have been an entirely different story if I'd seen this great hardware mod from back in 2021. While other people are modding the game to restore Mexico and give Arthur Morgan some daily jobs, YouTuber and absolute madlad Teenenggr was turning his desk into a horse. Which also happens to be a chaotic, bouncy, and completely terrifying surface for a PC monitor.

In the video detailing this mod you can see Teenenggr's process for achieving this real horse feel for his PC gaming experience. He attaches Arduino powered air cylinders to the legs of a desk, and has the game send them the horse speed to calibrate the movements. The result is a desk violently shaking in ways that do quite resemble the rocky rampage of a mountain ride. Completely throwing off its rider, or PC monitor.

Teenenggr fixes this by expertly duct taping the monitor and keyboard to the desk, but it's still just as scary to watch. Plus we all know how much electronics love being violently shaking around. Is this a practical mod? No. Is it perfect in every other possible way. Maybe? It really looks like it recreates the feel of being jostled around by a horse. But perhaps a complete desk chair setup is more in order for full immersion.

If you're looking at the video and thinking that a horse desk and it's chaotic energy is exactly what has been missing in your life, Teenenggr has a full tutorial provided on their website. This includes the code required to get this mod working as well as the hardware building steps. Perhaps it's time for the next champion to step up and make the chair to match.

If there's one thing that could shake up Red Dead Redemption 2 enough to get me interested, this could literally be the ticket. Though I don't think I'll be risking any of my monitors on the project any time soon. At least there's those wonderful horse girls running the kindest Rad Dead Online posse around. I bet they'd make great use out of this absolutely manic haptic setup.

There's a mega-star growing over on TikTok right now, something that attracts hundreds of thousands of views, if not millions, for merely showing up in a video. It's not what you'd expect either; it's not even someone pulling funny faces in time to a lo-fi beat. It's a desk. A $250–$330 desk from Costco, in fact.

It's called the Tresanti 47-inch Adjustable Height Desk, which is as much of a snappy name as you'd expect for this unassuming social media star. It is, however, a desk with a few modern frills: adjustable height settings at the push of a button, wireless charging, and USB ports.

None of which really goes to explaining how this one desk has amassed millions of views on TikTok over the past few years. The Tresanti isn't alone in offering many of these features, which can be found on a vast array of desk today. That includes some which can be shipped for cheaper, though reportedly the Tresanti sells for a fair chunk of cash less than its $330 online price if available in-store.

The most popular video of the desk is from TikTok user yallabella. By far the user's most watched TikTok, their run through of the desk's features clearly struck a chord with the scrolling public; the video has been watched around 11.5 million times.

The Tresanti is no one-hit-wonder, however. More videos of this desk have appeared from various accounts since, many of which have also hit the big time.

One video from earlier this year describes the desk as "the famous costco desk", and currently has over 800K views. Another video that calls it by a similar name has 1.7M views. A video from a TikTok account specialising in Costco buys has gained 2.7M views. There are many more, raking in 100,000s or millions of views.

This desk's odd fame has managed to rake in more views than many avid TikTokkers combined.

There are other popular desk videos on TikTok, of course, but few singular products have seen such intense interest. If you search "Ikea desk" in TikTok you'll find some popular homebrew ideas for desk setups, but nothing quite so singularly popular as the Tresanti. Ikea does sell a similarly neat standing desk, but it is pricier than the Costco model and doesn't quite match its feature set. For that, it is receiving a colder shoulder from the social media app.

Perhaps everyone collectively smells a bargain, but then as I noted before it's not like it's the cheapest adjustable standing desk available today. It's not a bad deal by the looks of it, but that really depends on how it stands up to repeated daily use. 

If this desk's popularity means more people are switching between sitting and standing while working/studying/streaming, then that's a win. All the ergonomics experts we've spoken to recommend shaking your posture up regularly, and if you want to hear more we have a guide to how to sit at a desk with good posture that will give you a good idea of the basic principles to healthy sitting.

It is strange that a desk you might not glance twice at in the store has become something of a TikTok star. Is there some sort of dark art to success on the platform? Probably. But this doesn't appear to be some next-level play to outsmart the algorithm. There's just something about the Costco desk's design that has tremendous mass appeal, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

It could've been any number of standing desks, but oddly it's this one. 

Well, this is more like it: a CES 2022 concept design that's relatively fresh and delightfully ridiculous. I give you Razer's Project Sophia, a modular gaming desk concept that promises to be "the gaming battlestation of the future" that still somehow feels like a giant laptop.

The basic idea is a gaming desk with a glass top, under which you can slot in thirteen separate modules to really personalise your setup. These modules range from system monitoring gubbins, secondary, tertiary, and maybe even quandary screens, pen tablets, or a cup warmer.

If I want a cup of tea kept warm, I just balance it on the GeForce RTX 3090 built into my desk. That does the job, but doesn't like a spill. So maybe a glass-topped warmer is a better option. Thanks, Razer.

Project Sophia promises desktop performance in a desk, though the actual computing module looks very much like it might be using mobile components—it looks every bit like someone ripped the PCB out of a Blade laptop and slapped it under a coffee table.

Now, there's a homebrew project I could get behind.

The claim of desktop performance still stands, however, as modern mobile GPUs and CPUs are so close to their larger cousins that they're able to deliver a supreme amount of gaming grunt. As we've seen from the latest hardware that AMD, Nvidia, and Intel have announced already this year for gaming laptops coming in the next few months.

The slim design, enabled by the use of such components, makes the Project Sophia desk look pretty damned slick. And, of course it's Chroma RGB enabled with a wide lightband circling the desktop itself.

But the main allure of Razer's concept design is its modularity, the ability to magnetically attach a host of these different modules to the underside of your glass-top desk, giving you access to system information, hot keys, and other such goodies tailored to your own needs. Razer provides example layouts for The Gamer, The Creator, The Streamer, and The WFH, each with different setups for their individual perceived tastes. 

I'll be honest, I don't really see the need for most of these modules, I mean I really don't need to see exactly what speed by CPU and GPU are running at 24/7. If I did, then the screen on top of my NZXT Kraken cooler would be displaying that rather than the GIF of Holly from Red Dwarf that's currently looping in my rig.

Sure, maybe a streamer will want to monitor the production, and need touchscreen hot keys to switch between things without resorting to something so sordid as a physical Loupedeck or Elgato Stream Deck—physical buttons, how gauche—but a lot of these modules are needless distractions from the gaming main event on-screen.

I mean, I don't want to burn a palm casually reaching for my mouse only to rest a hand on the cup warmer module. But I do wonder if you might be able to overclock it, turn it into some single-ring burner and cook eggs on your desktop.

There's also the fact that I would bet few of you have completely clear desktops. With all the different modules and displays on offer baked into the lid of the Project Sophia concept, where's all this going to live?

I'm already lucky enough to have a gaming desk with a PC built into it, one with a glass top, too. Though mine's a hell of a lot chunkier as the Lian Li DK04 houses full size PC components. And I can happily leave stuff cluttering up the top of it, though I do understand that image above will probably give some people nightmares.

But I still cannot help but really want the Project Sophia desk for my own despite all this. 

Forget the 65-inch OLED screen it has strapped to the end of it (which only adds to the massive-laptop-on-legs aesthetic), the fact that it looks like the control console from a shadowy Section 31 ship in Star Trek means my unrelentingly nerdy side needs this in my life.

Unlike the tired Alienware concept products Dell's gaming wing showed off this week, Razer's never-to-be-released desktop may be mostly pointless in real terms, but it actually comes with the most important thing a concept design needs: desirability.

So yeah, do want.

With all the time we spend at out desks—not just playing games and working but chatting with friends, watching videos, and hopefully minding our ergonomics—it doesn't hurt to treat yourself to a new accessory, a toy, or other pleasing doodad every now and then. The same way we want a comfortable bed for all the sleeping we do in our lives, we want a comfortable environment at our desks.

Sure, we've got our PCs, our monitors, our headsets and mice and microphones, but have you added anything that makes your desk a more pleasant place to spend time? That's our question this week: What have you used to make your desk nicer?

We've got answers from the PC Gamer team below, and we'd love to hear yours in the comments, too.

A coffee warmer

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: I cannot stress enough that I'm not joking when I say that this silly, very cheap coffee warmer has changed my desk life. A friend got me one years ago and I replaced it with an identical one after years and years of mugs had finally scratched away too much of the heating pad coating. I drink three cups of coffee a morning, but very, very slowly. I used to walk downstairs to my microwave several times a day when I'd inevitably let a cup get cold by accident. Never again.

A monitor stand

Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: Apparently this thing costs $60, yikes, but the Fellowes Monitor Stand that I snagged from our offices eons ago remains a big help. It's just nice to have a second tier on your desk, another layer to sit stuff on and under. I put a speaker atop it that I use for general audio playback, when I'm not playing a game that merits a headset. And the drawer is a vault for all kinds of necessary junk: stamps, batteries, chapstick, USB sticks, knives.

A wireless mouse

Tim Clark, Brand Director: In terms of actual computery stuff, Wes turned me on to the joys of a Wireless mouse a few years back and I've been using a Logitech one ever since. It's a bit like the swap from driving a stick shift to an automatic—your former life suddenly feels absurdly primitive. Everything just makes more sense. As for desk frippery, my middle sister bought me one of those plasma balls a few birthdays ago, and though I don't have it on that often, whenever I do it delights me.

A fake cat

Graeme Meredith, Video Editor: There is a fake cat in the office. I have used it to make my desk nicer.

Microfiber cloth

Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: My last pair of glasses came with an oversized microfiber cleaning cloth and it's now my favorite desk thing. Smudges on your glasses suck (if you don't wear glasses, imagine looking at your monitor through photographic evidence of ghosts) and regular cleaning cloths feel like accessories for dolls once you've used an appropriately sized one. No more swirling a tiny fabric square around, moving the smudge in circles and then accidentally touching the lens while trying to find a cleaner bit of cloth. Now I can cover my whole hand in microfiber and become something more than human. When the smudges start to win against even Large Cloth, I wash it and let it dry, clean my glasses with warm water and Dawn dish soap, and then use the laundered cloth's ample surface area to dry them. I will never return to Small Cloth oafishness. 

A whole new desk

Natalie Clayton, Features Producer: Is it boring to say "a better desk"? When Scotland entered a second lockdown and I was forced to stop using my co-working space in Leith, I was crammed into a plate-sized desk in the front room. Keyboard hanging off one end, monitor stand off the other, with a slight wobble to make the entire affair feel extra precarious. Took a minute, but I ended up finally replacing it with a perfectly unremarkable Ikea desk the other month—and beyond the immediate thrill of feeling like a DIY expert, it's the wee touch I needed to make this space feel less like a spare bedroom and more like an actual office.

Just kidding, my real answer is this daft 3D-printed Apex Legends gravity lift I got off Etsy.

Books. Sort of.

John Strike, Art Editor: I'm currently working off a temporary desk which is a few inches too short. The books I've used to prop it up include:

The Expectant Dad's Survival Guide: A comprehensive need to know for new fathers that's also been used as a coaster.

Pompeii: The Erotic Secrets: An inexplicable Christmas gift from my parents showcasing some of the finest pornography in ancient Rome.

No One Home: The tenth book in Tim Weaver's David Raker crime series. Fascinating fact: Tim Weaver used to be my manager, and editor of Xbox World Magazine.

The Every Day Chicken Cookbook: Condemned to a life on the floor by chickens who demand change.

A little fan

Christopher Livingston, Features Producer: This little fan with fabric paddles. It's relatively quiet, it provides a nice little breeze provided you're quite close to it (and since it's on your desk, you're quite close to it), and it doesn't have a grill like most fans so it never really gets dusty or dirty. The fabric paddles mean you can stick your hand right into it and it won't hurt (my dumb cat loves swiping at the spinning blades with his dumb cat foot and even trying to bite them). I like it so much I bought a second one for the end table in our living room.

A bottle

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: This morning I drank some Irn Bru, like most mornings. Does the empty bottle make my desk nicer? Who can say? But my thirst is quenched, and that's nice. 

Like many who are chained to their desks for much of the day, I had started to covet a standing desk. Something to let me change up my position during the day and allow me to at least pretend there’s something healthy about my lifestyle.

The Vari Electric Standing Desk is among the more popular and affordable electric standing desks around. One will set you back $695 ($950 AUD). It’s fairly low frills for that price, and a bit smaller than some PC desks. Both of which had me concerned about how it would do as a gamer's battle station as well as a-work-from-home surface. 

After a fair amount of use, though, I’m happy to say my concerns were for naught.

Setting up the desk is a very simple process. It arrives as two packages, one for the legs and the other for the table top portion of the desk. Both are very heavy, but assembly is simple enough. The legs slide into the desk and click into place. Then it’s just a matter of fitting everything in and getting it upright. I was able to do it by myself but these parts might be unwieldy or difficult for some just for the size and weight. Once assembled the unit feels very solid, so it feels worth some initial awkwardness, at least.

The control panel for the desk slides into place a bit like the legs, and then everything can be plugged in. The instructions are easy to follow and there are two modes for the controls. One allows you to set your preferred heights so you can get back to your sweet spots. The other allows for minor and major manual changes on the fly. Both work as you’d expect, but I found I preferred to keep it manual for little changes over the course of the day.

The Vari Electric Standing Desk is rated for a max weight of 99.8kgs which should be more than enough for most people. But I wasn’t so much concerned about the weight as I was the overall size.

The desktop is 122 x 76cm, which is smaller than what I’m used to. I have a setup that currently involves two decent sized monitors, PC tower, keyboards, mouse and charging pad, Elgato Stream Deck, webcam, mic, speakers, headphones, phone charger, controllers, and whatever else I’ve left on it that day. All except my PC tower managed to squeeze on, and so long as the cables can move freely as the desk moves, the PC tower below the desk hasn’t been an issue. The desk came with a few helpful cable accessories like hooks and Velcro strips to make life easier, too.

Mounting clamps for monitors and other devices would make the set-up process even less of a problem, though I’d hardly call it one as it is. 

In action, the Vari Electric Standing Desk lifts and lowers effortlessly. There’s no shaking as it shifts up and down, and the only times I’ve had any issues has been where my cable management was the culprit more than anything else. Even the noise it makes while moving is pretty minor. It may take some tweaks for your setup, but this desk is very workable on a daily basis.

It also looks quite good. The butcher block top is an attractive veneer on sturdy metal legs that don’t look out of place in a study. The top is a bit easy to dent, however, and so I have a scratch line from the feet of my monitor. It happened a lot easier than I expected, too, and I was much more careful afterwards. Still, a word of warning to anyone sliding things around on their desk.

As for seating, you can of course settle for a chair and then stand the rest of the time. However, Vari provided an Active Seat for the review, which is a stool to accompany the Vari Electric Standing Desk. These retail at $255 ($400 AUD/£325), so around half the price of the desk, depending on your region. It arrived in one piece with no assembly required, but again another large somewhat heavy package.

The Active Seats are designed to allow you to stand and lean and swivel so you’re not locked in one spot, which is the key to good ergonomics. It has a wide range of height options so you can use it alongside all the height options of the desk, but it’s also a little... odd. The nature of the seat means it’s never totally stable, which is designed to keep you moving. It does this very well, and I’ve almost fallen off a bunch of times. That said, it has also allowed me to maintain standing positions much longer than I would have without it. If you’re looking to do a lot of standing and leaning at your desk, the Active Seat is definitely helpful, but it takes a lot of getting used to and isn’t cheap.

But the Vari Electric Standing Desk itself is pretty great. It’s sturdy, easy to put together, has a quality build, and holds more weight than expected. The mechanisms for changing heights are reasonably quiet, too, and it looks good and professional in my office. Paired with the Active Seat, I have been able to increase how long I can stand at my desk, and all without sacrificing my gaming setup or productivity.

If you're interested in things in tech and gaming that can be rated, and the ratings they get, then you're in the right place with this latest episode of Future's weekly review show, Totally Rated. This week iMore and TechRadar tell us if we should care about New Pokémon Snap, T3 and Windows Central show us the cable-managed cleverness of Secretlab's Magnus gaming desk, and GamesRadar and TechRadar break down the latest PS5 exclusive, Returnal.

Starting with some poké photography, New Pokémon Snap landed exclusively on Nintendo Switch last week. If you're new to photographing anime critters, then this is a revival of the Nintendo 64 version, but with new islands and Pokémon to, well, snap. You'll be exploring beautiful regions and researching the wildlife that inhabits them at a nice, serene pace.

Both iMore and TechRadar recommend New Pokémon Snap, but with caveats. Sara Gitkos from iMore says "if you are a fan of relaxing games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Pokémon, this low-key photography sim should be right up your alley." Adam Vjestica from TechRadar is cooler on it, saying "it’ll probably pass muster with Pokémon-loving kids, who will delight in seeing Pikachu scamper across the screen for perhaps the very first time. But for anyone aged 10 or above, this eclectic safari park isn’t worth the price of admission.”

In the world of hardware, Windows Central and T3 were lucky enough to try out the new Magnus gaming desk from Secretlab, and with its great cable management, durable design, and magnetic accessories, it's looking pretty handy. Which isn't much surprise coming from the makers of the Titan and Omega, two of the best gaming chairs in our book. However, like those stellar-but-expensive seats, I fear the Magnus may be a bit too pricey for my home office.

Either way, T3's Robert Jones loves the Magnus: "This gaming desk exudes premium in every detail, and it’s all-metal construction imbues it with a quality no other rival can match." Daniel Thorpe-Lancaster from Windows Central shared Robert's praise, but also pointed out that "if you want something other than black, need a much larger desk, or prefer the variety of standing desks out there, then you may be better served elsewhere."

Future's critics also discuss the difficulty of the latest PlayStation 5 exclusive, Returnal. This roguelike puts you in the spacefaring boots of Selene as she crash lands on a shapeshifting world. You'll need to search this strange, ever-changing world to escape, and restart the adventure each time you die. It's not out on PC, but hopefully it'll follow ex-PlayStation exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn  onto our monitors soon.

Vic Hood from TechRadar is keener on the game, saying it's the kind of technical showcase PS5 owners—I understand they do exist, somewhere—have been waiting for: "Returnal is a PS5 exclusive that emphatically meets the standards of what we’ve been crying out for from the new console, and it’s a fantastic showcase for what this new hardware is actually capable of." But while GamesRadar's Ben Tyrer loved the story, he also says "Returnal can be messy, tough, and perhaps a little too uncompromising for a $70 game."

You can find new episodes of Totally Rated across Future's websites every Thursday.

I've seen the light, and it is #FFFFFF. After years of building black, windowless obelisk PCs, I'm now smitten with my new white case and how well it matches my desk. It's a fun angle on PC building I hadn't considered too much before: not just paying attention to how tidy and stylish the PC looks on the inside, but how it fits with the rest of my setup.

If you've had the itch to build a new PC but have been holding off because of GPU and CPU shortages, building a more aesthetic PC+desk combo is a great alternative. Just a new case can make a big difference—although if you're like me, one upgrade may snowball into thinking about all the other things you could do to class up your desk and make it better fit with the room it lives in.

Building a new standing desk was the catalyst for me. I had a nice light birch wood top which for years had been sitting on black legs and a cheap black Ikea shelf. I decided to switch to white legs, then got a new white filing cabinet to go with the desk. I love how clean the white hardware looks. And because my desk is in the living room, it fits better with our natural light white moulding around the doors and windows, too. Looking under the desk, the black PC really stood out—black cables are kind of inevitable, but the PC case I could do something about. 

Color is the key

I wanted a case with room for a thick 280mm Arctic cooler, so I bought the white Lian Li Lancool 2 Mesh and transferred my PC over. The white case actually pairs beautifully with my Gigabyte RTX 3070 Vision graphics card and the white LEDs on my RAM. If I got a white motherboard, I'd really be in business (although I'll never give up my brown Noctua fans). Fully customizing your PC interior is a whole topic by itself that I'll probably put more effort into next time I do a significant upgrade.

Even with just the case swap, every day I sit down at my desk I'm pleased with how nice it looks together. The Lancool 2 Mesh's tinted side panels give the case a white and black combo that pairs well with my subwoofer and the black hardware on top of my desk. I wish I'd thought about a white monitor arm, but maybe some new white speakers are in my future. This is a new desk in a new apartment for me, so I'll be doing a lot of fiddling with it in the months ahead. And this is an amateur setup compared to what you'll find from PC gamers who have put tons of thought into everything surrounding their desks.

Reddit's grand temple of PC building, /r/battlestations, is filled with popular posts showcasing PCs and entire rooms ablaze with RGB lights, and multi-monitor setups that I can't imagine actually using day-to-day without ruining my neck. They're sure impressive, though!

Alongside the flashiest battlestation posts are tons of beautiful gaming setups that offer a more practical takeaway: showing just how effective matching up the colors around your desk can be. It's a great place to look for inspiration. Here are some of my favorites, and what I learned from them.

Stick to white and colors will really pop

Redditor leh0ang's desk here is maybe a touch removed from minimalist, but the abundance of white hardware and decor really makes it work. Look at how well the NZXT PC case's B&W design matches the thin bezels of the monitors, the speakers, and even the mouse. That theme continues to the framed photos above their desk and the shelves to the right. Even the Xbox controller is white.

The really pro move here, though, is the predominately white keyboard, with splashes of red, yellow and purple accenting that match the desktop. Beautiful. It also avoids being too white, which is possible (unless you enjoy your desk looking like it belongs in an art house sci-fi movie). 

Accent colors look great with black

I'm in love with the perfect, subtle uses of color at Redditor dailysetuptech's desk. First, the obvious lighting: the yellow tint on the case RGBs will be easier on the eyes late at night than bright white or blue, and the lightbulb lamp (which freaking levitates) is an equally warm light. RGBs tend to look harsh and digital, but the warm lighting here along with the nice wooden desk makes the whole setup feel especially cozy.

There are a couple brilliant accent colors on the desk, too. First, the yellow Escape and Enter keys on the keyboard, which tie it to the PC's lighting. And then my favorite bit: the red headphone cable and the red toy Ferrari parked under the monitors. Nailed it.

Embrace the wood grain

Here are a pair of examples from Redditors mrnovarexo and SkweezyJibsss, who each used wood as a key accent on their desks. Both have dark, reddish brown desks, and you can see how mrnovarexo kept almost everything at their desk black and grey except for a few splashes of color that really go with the wood. There's the orange glow of the mouse RGB, the orange row of keys on the numpad, and then the desert wallpaper, perfectly matched with the clock off to the side. If there's one thing I've picked up on from trawling r/battlestations, it's that I really need a stylish clock on my desk.

SkweezyJibsss' setup really leans into the more rustic look wood can support, including a nice potted pothos plant, the framed paintings and the exposed bulb lamp. The pro touches here are the custom wood wrist rest for the keyboard and the wood paneled Edifier speakers (all it's really missing is a laser-cut wood PC case). I can only hope that there's a leather smoking chair just out of frame. 

Get creative and pick a theme

Other than some color coordination, I don't have a theme at my desk—my GameCube organizer and little Mario figures don't exactly gel with the Space Runaway Ideon poster on my wall. But Redditor Distinquish offers a great example of how to tie together a whole desk thematically with the Lego Saturn V rocket and framed SpaceX art deco posters. Even the Ikea orb lamps match the planetary vibe. The color coordination is on point, too, between the desk plant and the foresty wallpaper. And having enough desk space for a cat? Major bonus points. 

Think about the rest of your room, too

Whether your desk is in your bedroom or living room or office, think about how you can integrate it, and your PC, with its surroundings. Here's a really nice room from Redditor CuPc8K3, who clearly thought about a broader aesthetic than my measly combo of white desk and white PC case. Look at everything going on here: 

• Yellow and teal are the primary colors for the room, right down to the carpet. CuPc8K3 even cited a specific color palette as inspiration.
• The chair, wallpaper, framed sound diffuser, typewriter, painted wall, couch throw pillow, one of the Destiny figures and the PC's front panel LED all match
• The yellow curtains and couch do a nice job of balancing the color on each side of the room
• The symmetrical shelves are just damn nice to look at
• The gray-blue desk drawers are a close match for the wall paint and blend in well
• Dog!

Put this kind of effort into the area around your desk and you'll enjoy spending time in your gaming space that much more. 

Secretlabs is making a desk. A gaming desk. If you're not familiar with the concept then let me break down the core ingredients: black paint job, angular styling, and, of course, RGB lighting. You'll find plenty of that with Secretlab's Magnus Metal Desk, too, but the company says the best bit is its magnetic modular system, built to take the hassle out of cable management and desk accessories.

While we're used to Secretlabs spitting out some of the best gaming chairs going, it was really only a matter of time before a desk came our way. The Magnus is wholly built in-house by Secretlabs, and will initially launch at 1.5m in desk width, later to be followed up by a 1.2m model.

For cable management a hinged rear opening can be exposed, which comes with space for a multi-socket plug adapter and cable runs down the rear legs. Essentially space to stuff your cables into and forget about, if you're anything like me. The RGB lighting also lives under here, in case you were wondering.

For those accessories you can't live without, or cable runs that might otherwise mess up your aesthetic, Secretlab is putting that all-metal frame to good use with some magnetic accessories. There are headphone hangers, anchors, cable tidies, sheathes, and more. Basically, there are a lot of magnets in the box.

The Magnus Desk will be available for $449, although you'll have to pay more if you want all your accessories to match your desk mat. Did I mention the built-in desk mat is replaceable? Magnetic, too. The accessories range from $13 for the cable fastening straps to $59 for a diffused RGB strip.

I looked at reviews of standing desks for months before deciding that I would save money and be happier building my own. After a surprisingly easy assembly and approximately 1,000 years of cable management, I can't recommend this path enough if you're considering a standing desk yourself. I've never taken more pleasure from having a customized gaming desk setup.

For me, a good "gaming" desk requires two things: sturdiness and space. It needs to feel stable, and I wanted a desk spacious enough to support my HOTAS when I feel like playing Star Wars: Squadrons. The gaming desks you'll find on Amazon are mostly cheap, garish crap, which is why our recommended gaming desks are usually just good quality standing desks. If you've never tried a standing desk before, you may be surprised how much more alert and active it feels to play action games or shooters while on your feet.

As with upgrading your PC, the DIY desk route lets you save money by buying only the exact components you need and ending up with a sturdier desk as a result.

Why build your own standing desk?

Because you can save money while getting the exact desk you want.

In 2016 I bought a $100 Ikea Gerton tabletop to use as a desk with some cheap legs. The Gerton is great: it's an inch-thick slab of beech wood with a metal bar run through the center for stability. As a desk it's a borderline excessive (aka just right) 61 inches wide. Tossing it to switch to a standing desk would've been a waste of money. Any cheap standing desk would've come with a much smaller and flimsier laminate top, while any nice standing desk would've cost a whole lot more for a similar top. So I decided to reuse my desktop and find the right legs to go with it.

If you've built more than one PC in your life, you probably know what it's like to run down the checklist of parts in your rig, deciding what to keep and what to replace. For me, this was a bit like keeping my case and buying all-new parts to put inside it.

Maybe your existing desk has a cheap top that you're ready to ditch. In that case, buying one separately will let you customize your desk by cutting or staining it yourself. For example, this redditor bought the Gerton tabletop, cut six inches off and stained it a rich walnut to build the exact desk they wanted.

There are plenty of other options out there, like buying a custom made real wood table or even using an old door you buy off Craigslist.

If your goal is a really high quality standing desk, this will definitely save you money. For example, the Fully Jarvis bamboo standing desk, an exceptionally well-reviewed model, costs $670 for a 60x30 model. At Uplift, which makes The Wirecutter's favorite standing desk, upgrading from a smaller laminate top to a 60x30 bamboo desk brings the price to $749.

The tradeoff with any DIY project is more work, of course, but when I built my desk I was relieved to find out that using the Gerton was still really easy.

The build: Uplift V2 + Ikea Gerton

I looked into a range of standing desk legs before deciding on Uplift, which makes the extremely well-reviewed V2 standing desk as well as the huge corner standing desk Evan wrote about in December. Some other popular standing desk brands don't sell the legs separately, but Uplift does, along with a great customization process that includes leg shape and color, a variety of control panels, and accessories like monitor arms and cable management tools. I already had stuff for cable management and bought my own monitor arm, but Uplift sent me its V2 standing desk legs for a DIY build.

The V2 legs start at $439, while it's possible to buy a budget standing desk frame for less than $200. Ultimately user reviews steered me away from cheaper standing desk brands for a few reasons:  

• Wobble is one of the most common complaints about budget standing desks, and I didn't want any wobble
• Budget standing desk legs like the Vivo have a single lift motor rather than two, and the Ikea Gerton is heavy. One motor would still lift it just fine, but two feels safer and more reliable long-term.
• Uplift's 10 year warranty is much better than a 2- or 3-year warranty.
• Budget desk frames tend to have a more limited height range.

If you're already saving money by reusing part of an old desk, I think it makes sense to pair it with high quality legs. And it turned out that the MVP of my entire build was Uplift's fantastic instruction booklet, which made every step of the process really easy to follow.

All of the parts for the Uplift desk frame, including seven different types of screws, are clearly bagged and labeled so there's no confusion over what to use. The manual is actually the same for assembling an Uplift desk or using your own desktop, with clearly labeled instructions at each relevant step for a desktops with or without pre-drilled holes.

I especially appreciated this tip about not drilling my pilot holes too deep and using a piece of tape on my drill bit to hit the right depth. It's great advice for newbies or people like me who often think "eh, I can just eyeball it" and are always wrong.

The whole build was surprisingly quick, and despite being methodical only took me about an hour and a half. Following the instructions, I started by flipping over my desktop and screwing each leg into its own crossbar assembly and attaching the side brackets, making sure I had the long side pointing towards the front of the desk. The Uplift V2 C-Frame legs attach closer to the rear of the desk than the front, which is a nice design: It gives you more clear space near the front of the desk, puts the center of mass closer to your monitors, and makes it easy to tell during the build process which way your desk is facing.

Uplift's instructions recommend placing your legs about 1/2-inch away from the edges, and I probably spent the most time during my build measuring multiple times to ensure the legs were properly aligned and straight. One tip for this part: because you'll have to slide in the crossbar rails that attach the two crossbars, don't bother perfectly positioning the second leg at the same time as the first one. You'll end up having to move it slightly to fit the rail in, then measure all over again to ensure you have it properly spaced and straight.

Aside from carefully measuring the leg positioning, it's hard to mess up any part of this build. Most of it is simply screwing in machine screws (again, they're all helpfully labeled). While Uplift's included hex key is perfectly usable, I highly recommend using a ratcheting screwdriver with a hex key if you have one. It'll be much faster and more maneuverable.

With your own desktop, you'll have to decide where to screw in the control pad for adjusting your desk height. I chose the right side of my desk, about six inches away from the edge. The instructions even have helpful advice on how to orient the control box, which slides neatly into the crossbar rails, so that it's easy to run a short cable to the control pad and run the power cable out the other side. The design keeps most of the desk's cabling out of your way.

When I set out to document the DIY process, I expected to make a more step-by-step guide. But for the most part, all I had to do was follow the instructions. Read them carefully and you'll have a brand new desk within a couple hours. 

I did make one mistake in the build process when I got a little too cavalier about installing the included wire management tray. I drilled holes and mounted it near the back-center of my desk, and then realized that my monitor arm mount needed to clamp onto that same spot. Thankfully the plastic tray was easy to unscrew and reattach a few inches further from the edge.

Finishing touches: Turning a standing desk into a dream desk

This was the final parts list for my standing desk build: 

• Ikea Gerton top ($100)
• Uplift V2 C-Frame, white, with comfort keypad ($478)
• Uplift anti-fatigue mat ($99)
• Huanuo dual monitor arm ($57)
• Bonnlo filing cabinet ($157)
• Joto cable sleeves ($12)

Maybe your dream desk involves a lot of RGBs or a PC actually built into the desk itself. That is pretty rad, but going into this process my dream was a bit more humble. I primarily wanted to keep the desktop I liked, convert it into a wobble-free standing desk, and ditch my monitor stands for a dual-monitor arm. Oh, and it was important for Krillin to keep me stocked with fresh milk. Priorities.

For a monitor arm I bought this affordable one on Amazon and am pretty happy with it, though I did spend almost as long running trying to run cables underneath its fiddly plastic covers as I did building the entire desk. Also, my monitors do shake a bit when I type. Unfortunately I think that's going to happen with almost any monitor arm that clamps to the desk rather than attaching to the wall.

The last step for my dream desk was ensuring all my cables looked as nice as possible when the desk was raised to standing height, and that involved a ton of twist-tying to bundle cables and then covering the bundles with zip-up sleeves. The trickiest part was leaving enough slack for everything to reach where it needed to. Make sure to do your cable management with the desk standing, not sitting, so you don't accidentally make something too short.

I'll probably keep tinkering with it and add another cable sleeve for my speaker. I love how the white legs pair with the beech wood, and bought a classy filing cabinet to replace the Ikea shelf that had once held up the right side of my desk. That is the one danger of building the exact desk you want: once you do, you'll probably keep coming up with new things to add to it.

2020 was my upgrade year. I swapped monitors and went ultrawide for the first time, 3440x1440 @ 144 Hz. On Black Friday I got a $180 SATA 2TB SSD. And after completing a series of rituals involving toad blood, I acquired an RTX 3080. 

Yes, it's nice hitting my head against the 144 fps ceiling in Control and other games. But my biggest upgrade turned out to be bamboo.

I knew I needed to change my work and gaming space in 2020. I was already working from home before the pandemic hit, but losing the option of lugging a laptop to public spaces like libraries, cafes, or a local restaurant one or two days a week meant that my workspace was going to absorb even more of my activity (and sanity). Since 2016 I'd been using IKEA's Skarsta, a serviceable but basic standing desk. 

I'd outgrown its 47" space, but by April the desk had become the sponge for everything: mail, notes, reading material, the odd gaming collectible. It was an entertainment center, office, and auxiliary dining table. It's a lot to ask of a $240 piece of semi-disposable Swedish furniture, and the fact that it was a standing desk didn't magically banish any of these issues.

The prospects for a new desk initially looked grim. When you type "gaming desk" into Amazon, a sea of questionable particle board that appears before you. It's all manufactured by brands you've never heard of, and many of them draw their design inspiration from the racing car beds popular with nephews worldwide. Consider the Respawn 2000 Gaming Computer Desk, an "L SHAPED GAMING DESK was built to withstand battle after battle," according to the product description. There's no mention of what the desk is made of other than non-descript "Wood, Metal, Plastic," but it does promise to provide the Ultimate Gaming Desk Experience. I do like the giant headphone hooks mounted at the corners, actually.

It's easy to figure out what the highest-tier GPU or even keyboard is; what's the Bentley of gaming desks? It's a hard question to answer because not many high-end options exist. The few gaming gear manufacturers who do produce chairs are doing so at $400 or less, and even those typically have some gimmick, like RGB stuffed into them.

Of the other conventional office furniture makers, Uplift stands out as one that we hadn't yet evaluated in our own best gaming desk guide. The front of the company's website presents Uplift as a larger-scale distributor for companies trying to outfit a new office, but the company produces built-to-order standing desks, each covered by a 10-year warranty on most of the metal components of the desk, like the motorized legs and the steel frame. The company's founder is a mechanical engineer and certified ergonomist.

Deft standing

Uplift sent me the Curved Corner Standing Desk, a larger setup that starts at $1180 (smaller models are $550-$750), excluding the many, many add-ons and accessories that can be folded in. These range from everything to different trays and options for cable management to clamp-on power banks, keyboard trays, monitor arms, and, incredibly, a human-sized hammock you can mount under the desk. It's a six-foot-wide desktop, and the motorized legs elevate 50 inches off the ground (as a six-foot-tall person, I set the desk at 41 inches when standing).

Reflecting on the upgrades I was able to make this year, transitioning to this wider workspace was one of the most meaningful, especially in the context of spending an unhealthy amount of time at home. I don't want to oversell it as some kind of magic makeover, but swapping desks helped me address a longstanding irritation I'd had with my previous setups: I've always struggled to find a gaming chair with arms that sit low enough that they don't collide with my desk edge. I didn't know how to put words to this problem, the subtle discomfort that prompted awkward microcorrections in my chair as I bumped up against the edge of the desk. It's amazing how you just sort of ignore and learn to live with stuff like this that actually measurably affects your favorite hobby. 

Three months in, I'm a convert to the concave shape. The way it makes room for your body is inviting. I opted for a bamboo surface (one of five that Uplift offers, including from solid and reclaimed wood, laminate, and an "eco" material made entirely from recycled sawdust), and the only way I can describe the softness of the beveled edge of the desk is to compare it to drinking out of a fancy beer glass. It's surprising what a difference it makes not to have a hard corner pointed at you.

Uplift makes a good first impression with the customization tool on its website. It's the sort of thing that anyone who's used NZXT BLD or a similar online PC building tool will find familiar, a page that visualizes the desk as you swap out different parts, like the choice between different styles of drawers you can screw into the underside of the desk.

One of the downsides of buying almost any large piece of furniture is you have to assemble the thing. The three standard Uplift boxes for the V2 Curved Corner Standing Desk, with no accessories included, weigh 170 lbs. They arrived by freight, delivered to my doorstep on an actual wooden pallet. Unsurprisingly this took two people to assemble, which took a little over two hours but wasn't otherwise difficult. Individual components are high-quality, no bolt or important piece feels off-the-shelf. With two exceptions, all the screws went in smoothly. One slightly-paralyzing thing is that there aren't pre-set positions for the variety of add-ons, so in order to add components like a drawer or certain kinds of cable management I had to be comfortable drilling pilot holes into the underside of the desk.

After spending the back quarter of 2020 in this setup, the biggest difference is I notice how much better I treat my space, how much more respect I have for it. My desk is less of a container for everything I do. And I feel a bit closer to my gaming habit: I run Corsair's Carbide Air 540 case, a great enclosure with a big footprint. And o n the wider Uplift I was finally able to mount my PC on my desk, and I like being able to hear the fans clearly, to see the SSD indicators blinking away reassuringly, and plug cables and drives in without completing some kind of yoga bend.

Something I've learned using a standing desk since 2014 is that standing, like anything else, isn't a silver bullet for health or ergonomic problems. For me standing is just a gateway to having a different posture and, if I'm lucky, a more present mindset while working. But the one thing I'm able to do with an adjustable-height desk is transition between sitting and standing days throughout the week. When I feel more awake or my back isn't feeling great, I can try standing as an alternative. A neat feature in one of the four varieties of keypad Uplift sells lets you program different height positions into numbered presets, like radio stations in a car, removing the guesswork my previous crank-driven IKEA desk sometimes presented. There's even an anti-collision feature, which I triggered when the lip of the desk lowered into a windowsill, sparing it from a dent.

Also: if you're already standing at your setup, I can't say enough about the E7 Active anti-fatigue mat that Uplift makes, an almost eight-pound slab that way outperforms any other standing desk mat I'd used. The thickness of the polyurethane material makes a huge difference, I basically felt like I was standing on an indestructible layer of soft caramel all the time. The textured areas of the mat help alleviate fidgeting.

I'm glad I embraced changing up the area that supports so much of my time—Uplift's customizability and quality get my full endorsement as a PC gamer. Hopefully this setup will continue to make 2021 more comfortable as I spend 10-plus hours a day here.

Office chairs don't occur in nature, and so it follows that there's no automatic, 'natural' way to sit in one. But there are good and bad ways to sit at a desk, and sitting better can increase your long-term comfort and decrease your risk of developing back pain or other problems related to poor ergonomics. Your sitting and standing posture can affect everything from breathing to how likely you are to injure yourself.

I'd also argue that correcting bad sitting habits can make you better at competitive games. When your setup allows for a balanced posture with no strain or pinched nerves, you'll be less distracted. And for shooters, good ergonomics means having a great range of control over your mouse arm. 

If you don't notice any benefits from good posture—which doesn't necessarily mean you're not getting any—you won't have lost anything by correcting it except for a bit of time and concentration. And if an ergonomist happens to walk by you, you'll get a pat on the back for sitting properly, so that's a plus.

How to sit at a desk

Whether you're working or playing games, below are our basic recommendations for sitting at a desk:

• Your knees should be bent at 90 degrees, and your feet flat on the floor. 
• Your elbows should be level with your desk and close to your body (meaning that you shouldn't have to extend your arms to reach your mouse and keyboard). 
• Your shoulders should be relaxed. 
• Your lower back should be supported. If your chair doesn't have built-in lumbar support, a small pillow can do the job. 
• Your monitor should positioned such that you don't have to tilt your head up.

These guidelines are based on a conversation with ergonomist Melissa Afterman from 2015. They also have a thumbs up from physical therapist Dr Caitlin McGee, who specializes in gaming-related health at 1HP Gaming. (Dr McGee has also written about the causes of chronic wrist pain and what to do about it on PC Gamer.) 

Adopting these rules can help avoid unnecessary strain and pinching. If it all feels weird and uncomfortable at first, give it time, because your muscles need to adjust to new habits. (Exercising those muscles could help, too—more on that shortly.)

How and when to change it up

If we're being honest, none of us are likely to maintain a 'perfect' sitting position at all times, even if we know all the rules. The good news is that we shouldn't do that anyway. McGee has another rule for sitting: "Your best posture is your next posture." 

Even if you're sitting in the ergonomist-recommended way, you shouldn't stay in that exact position for hours at a time. For example, McGee suggests that you could switch to a cross-legged position for a while, just as long as you stick with the other principles, such as keeping your back supported and your shoulders relaxed. My chair reclines, so I sometimes lean back to think, but I don't continue typing from that position, which would require that I extend my arms.

As a general rule, McGee advises against sitting in any position that makes it difficult to take deep breaths. "If you can't breathe easily, it's probably not a great position for your back," she says. When in doubt that's a great, simple rule to follow.

If you're able, an adjustable sitting/standing desk allows you to take a break from sitting without stopping what you're doing. Otherwise, get away from your desk now and then, and stretch if you can. (Breaks are good for other reasons, too.)

A few years ago, Eric Robertson, Kaiser Permanente of Northern California's director of graduate physical therapy education, told our friends at LiveScience that adjusting your position every 20 minutes makes for a good cadence.

Above: This PC Gamer Show episode from 2015 still contains relevant advice. 

Other ways to help your back

I asked McGee about the effects of sitting on a thick wallet, which tilts the pelvis and puts strain on the lower back. "You could develop pain, patterns of alternately tight or weak muscles, and even altered breathing patterns," as a result of that kind of habit (among other things). But don't panic if you've spent years with a pile of receipts jammed into your back pocket, like I have.

"The body is remarkably adaptable," says McGee, "and while it takes about 8 weeks of training to start to see actual muscle growth, you can start to see changes in the connection between the brain and the muscle (neuromuscular development) much sooner." 

By correcting a bad habit, a "healthier, less-painful back with better posture" can be our reward in just one-to-two weeks, but only if we're establishing other good habits and doing "endurance, strength, and stretching exercises" to support the time we spend sitting, she says.

Yeah, I'm afraid we're supposed to exercise, too, because if posture isn't the sole cause of back problems, it follows that it's also not the sole fix. "More often, [lower back pain is caused by] a pattern that involves deficits in strength, mobility, and endurance," says McGee. "The longer those deficits persist, the more likely you are to develop pain and maladaptive compensations. The sooner you address those deficits, the easier they are to resolve."

1HP Gaming frequently posts advice to its blog, including exercise tips and routines. As always, be cautious about adopting new exercise routine, especially if you have any medical conditions—if you're unsure about anything, consult with a doctor.

If you've got the budget for it, another way to help out your back is to invest in a good desk chair. While some are super expensive, such as the $900-plus Steelcase Gesture, others are a bit more reasonable, like the $359 Secret Lab Omega. That's still not cheap, but it should last, and the difference between even a decent chair and a bad one is huge. If you need to find something less expensive, though, the most important thing to look for is adjustability. If you can't adjust the height or other aspects, you'll have a hard time getting into a good position for your body.

And if you do sit with a thick wallet in your back pocket, as I did for a very long time, you can do yourself a favor by finding somewhere else to stash it while you're at your desk. A 2014 study on the "effect of wallet thickness on spine posture, seat interface pressure, and perceived discomfort during sitting" concluded that "asymmetrical sitting is not recommended, even for short duration exposures." After I stopped sitting on my wallet, I noticed very quickly that I felt more balanced and noticed less lower back strain. Now I'm only tilted because of how bad I am at Rainbow Six Siege, not because of a stack of expired debit cards.

As someone whose first apartment was furnished with hand-me-downs and stuff people were throwing away (RIP to the office chair I found near Staples), the idea of buying brand new furniture makes me somewhat uncomfortable. That's especially true of furniture this expensive: BDI's Stance desk is an electric standing desk that is well-built, stylish, and costs more than my first car. 

BDI has been in the luxury office furniture game for while now with the Stance and Sequel lines of sit/stand desks. The Stance 6650 BDI sent to me for review is meant for users with small home offices or tiny workspaces. That works for me: My living room has been converted into an office/workshop since our main offices closed due to COVID-19. Assembly took a little over an hour, and I recommend having a second person around to help get it upright since it weighs over 100 pounds. The 48x24-inch desk was more than enough space for me, though if you need the extra room, these desks also come as large as 66x30-inches.

Build and materials

The first thing you'll notice is that the Stance is gorgeous. The satin-etched tempered glass surface and powder coated steel legs put it leagues ahead of cheaper standing desks which often use a laminate surface that's easy to scratch. BDI claims that its glass finish offers protection against scratches and fingerprints, and my experience mostly validated that claim. Aside from the occasional smudge from not using a coaster, I didn't put many marks on it. The Stance seems to hold it's own against day-to-day wear and tear, although I haven't tested it over a long period of time.

Overall, the Stance has a modern minimalist look to it and the tempered glass finish gives off strong CEO-of-a-tech-startup energy—whether that's a good thing or not is up to you. The modesty panel is nice for hiding sloppy cable work, but not really necessary if you plan to put the desk in the corner of a room. 

An issue I often found with standing desk converters is they can take up a lot of desk real estate. Cable management becomes a problem if you keep a desktop beneath your desk as well. If your cables aren't long enough you could inadvertently tug the connectors out of the system or, even worse, break a port. Let's not forget trying to lift up the damn thing: an unwieldy and potentially hazardous situation for some.

The Stance addresses the cable issue by placing a ledge on the underside of the desk. This acts as a tray where you can keep your powerstrip and any excess cables, so you don't have to worry about accidentally pulling out your power cords as the desk rises. I would have liked to see a cut-out or two in the desk to run display cables from my monitors to the PC so that they don't awkwardly hang behind it like sad powerlines after a storm. 

Height adjustment

I've been using a standing desk converter at home and in the office for over a year due to chronic back issues. Standing for work has been pretty great, as it turns out, but being a stand-up gamer has presented logistical challenges I didn't consider. The gas springs on the desk riser I have only support 33 lbs, and so the weight of my two 27 inch monitors was nearly enough to risk catastrophic desk failure.

The Stance supports 150 lbs, which is more than enough to handle all my kit, including my PC itself. The adjustable height of 24-49 inches is plenty of range for different working setups. For scale, I'm 5'9 and was able to work comfortably with the desk raised to 40.5 inches. If you're tall you still have another 9 inches to work with. When seated, dropping the desk to around 30 inches is where I feel most comfortable working or gaming. On the opposite end, if you're shorter or have a child who needs to use the desk, it can drop all the way down to 24 inches.

The powered leg system is controlled by a single motor with the help of a programmable keypad, and it can store up to four height presets. It's nice to start the day by hitting a button to move the desk to where I need it without manually adjusting it. (Though I do like to raise it to the maximum height from time to time and feel like a toddler messing around on my parent's computer. I've been home for months, let me entertain myself.)

The only big negative against the Stance as a gaming desk is that there is a noticeable lack of storage. The optional keyboard drawer is a great place for hiding away a keyboard and mouse, since there are little cut-outs to run cable through. I would have loved to have seen a larger attached drawer, though. For day to day use, the surface on the keyboard drawer is an unflattering textured rubber that doesn't make for a great gaming mouse surface. If you do skip the drawer, invest in a giant mousepad to give you all the gaming surface you need without smudging the glass.

The price

I mentioned earlier that this desk isn't cheap, and I meant it: The Stance retails for $1,450. This doesn't include the cost of the keyboard drawer ($200) or modesty panel ($129). Much like a good couch, a good desk costs a lot upfront but will last you years—but spending over $1,700 on a desk is probably a non-starter for most gamers. You could buy a high-end PC and a cheaper desk for the same amount.

If you're willing to pay for it, BDI's Stance desk works well as both a desk for work and play. I've been standing while gaming for over a year now and I love it. The Stance basically just gives me peace of mind. I don't have to worry about a cable being snagged in a riser or that the desk is going to buckle under its own weight. You can find a less fancy electric desk online for a fraction of the price if you're on a tighter budget. Ergonomic furniture isn't cheap, but the Stance is definitely in the luxury ergonomics category.

BDI offers a limited 3 year warranty on the desk, which is pretty standard and should cover any defects with the motor. For expensive furniture, it's probably wise to pick up an extended warranty from the retailer to be on the safe side. 

If you have about $1,400 burning a hole in your pocket and looking to class up your work and play space, the BDI Stance electric lift desks are well-crafted and stylish. After using this for a few weeks, it'll be tough for me to adjust back to a normal desk. It's like being given a Porsche 911 for a week and then being forced to go back to a Toyota Camry. 

Imagine this: you’re running a raid in the middle of the night. Your health is dropping on one side of the screen and your mana is tanking on the other, but you’re too fixated on dodging big red markers and rattling off the perfect rotation to notice your vitals. And then your desk peripherals explode in a flood of orange, letting you know some other beast is running your way, and your walls begin pulsing red as your health drops to dangerously low levels. 

Aside from saving your eyes from the glare of a screen in a dimly-lit room or spewing rainbows for the pure fun of it, that’s what a proper immersive RGB setup can do for you. 

In theory, at least. 

Ambient lighting has always interested me more than decorative RGB. Why would I want my keyboard looking like Nyan Cat’s rainbow expulsion as I sneak up on some dirty camper in Warzone or have Doom Guy ram his fist through a demon’s chest? That last one sounds fantastic, actually, but still. I remember a show when I was younger demonstrating Philips’ early amBX tech—a collection of peripherals from a vibrating keyboard, desktop fans, and glowing speakers—that promised to extend a game like Far Cry 2 beyond the screen. I was in love.

But like the Cyborg/MadCatz gaming lights that came soon after, lacklustre software support stopped my dream of ambient lighting dead in its tracks. Now that RGB is utterly ubiquitous, but also better than ever, Corsair’s LT100 Lighting Towers have struck me with the ambient lighting bug again. So I decided it was time to turn my dark and dingy gaming corner into a place even a leprechaun couldn’t possibly resist.

At the start of the week, my living room gaming setup looked like this; a 140cm IKEA Gerton worktop adorned with two mismatched Samsung screens, Logitech MX Sound speakers and TKL G Pro keyboard, and a Razer Mamba wireless mouse atop a generic desk pad. Tucked in the corner was my mini-ITX machine, punishing any occasional mouse flicks with a solid barrier of metal. Off to the left, a 55” QLED TV for third-person games or movies. 

The TV side of things was (mostly) fine. The rest? Cozy, a little cluttered, but mostly dark.

So I set out on a mission to free my eyes from inadequate lighting and flood my space with as much ambient illumination as possible—to take whatever was on my screen and extend it to the walls behind and the surrounding area.

The aforementioned Corsair LT100 towers can be reversed on their RGB pedestals, so now we have two towers illuminating the wall behind the screen and two more sat either side of my main display to blast sweet, sweet radiance directly into my peripheries. Logitech’s G560 2.1 desktop speaker system takes over from the outgoing MX Sound set, too, shedding a little bit of bulk yet still finding room to include front and rear-mounted RGB zones to spill out even more light. 

The LT100 towers do an admirable job on my clearly not white wall, which is an oversight I’ll have to address with some 3D panels I first must learn to cut. The Corsair LS100 light strips, while a better option for backlighting, aren’t designed for my particular use-case, but still find a way to (sometimes) work. 

The two lighting channels the single hub can handle are stuck to predefined screen layouts, meaning they’re only good for a single/dual-monitor setup or a single ultrawide panel. This last one worked well enough to suit my TV, but things were complicated by the included weak as hell magnetic clasps that struggled to keep the whole chain from falling to the floor.

On the desk itself, Corsair infiltrates a little further. The positively overboard MM800 RGB Polaris mousepad easily eliminates a generic desk pad. Paired with the open design Corsair K70 RGB MK.2 Low Profile Rapidfire keyboard means light is now spilling out from every inch of my desk. My reservations on RGB have been triggered, though. I prefer the cleaner look of my Logitech G Pro or something like the 60% Razer Huntsman Mini, but more keys mean more customisation. 

Between four illuminated obelisks, glowing speakers, a rainbow-spewing keyboard and mouse setup, and enough strip lights to turn the inside of any PC case into a rave, I think I’m about as close to a perfect screen-sync setup as I can stomach. It’s not that there’s too much ambient light beaming into my pupils, but wrestling with Logitech’s G Hub and Corsair’s iCue lighting software has turned my plan for a quick and easy boost of immersion into 30 minutes of troubleshooting with each game. 

The idea of screen-sampling for ambient lighting has been around for a while now, but nine times out of ten, either the Logitech speakers or Corsair light towers and strips just refuse to react. Profiles refusing to save mean I can’t even reliably use the iCue Nexus touchscreen to toggle lighting setups when I switch between gaming on the monitor or the TV. I ask for immersion, I get a real-life puzzle. 

While my quest for the ultimate ambient RGB desk seems far from over given even RGB chairs are a thing now, the personal lighting revolution is certainly upon us. If you’re just looking to personalize your space with your favorite colours, any amount of new peripherals on the market will serve you well, and the LT100 lighting towers are in a league of their own when they play ball. 

But if you’re hoping for all those individually-addressable LEDs to tell you when your spartan is ready to drop dead, it’s not a case of your imagination being the limit just yet - it’s about game developers choosing to implement specific lighting ecosystem APIs into their games—which is a gamble you should never base your setup around.

Before we get to the promised tips, a quick announcement: Over the next six months and beyond, PC Gamer will be publishing a series of articles on health and ergonomics. We're calling the project Health Kit, and AMD is supporting it. With input from doctors and other experts, we'll discuss ergonomics best practices, exercise, diet, repetitive strain injuries, eye health, and more. It's something we've wanted to do for a while now, and we're excited to make health and wellness a bigger part of PC Gamer's overall coverage.

As we talk to experts about PC gaming and health, we're spending a lot of time sitting at our desks. This first guide is a light introduction to Health Kit: nine simple ways PC Gamer team members have made their work and gaming desks a little healthier and more comfortable. The topic feels especially important now, as many of us are spending more time at home, and at our desks, than ever.

If you have suggestions of your own, consider sharing them in the comments below or in a discussion on the PC Gamer forums.

Get a giant mouse pad

The standard mouse pad size was always too small. Get a big one, and when you're playing shooters, try moving your mouse hand from the shoulder and elbow rather than from the wrist. That's the same advice you'd get if you asked an art teacher how to draw a straight line—see if it helps you make straighter, smoother motions.

We recommend this huge Corsair mouse pad.

Consider a smaller keyboard

If you aren't an accountant or frequent user of Alt codes (Alt-0151 makes the long em dashes we use), ask yourself how often you actually use the numpad block of your keyboard. On a smaller desk, a tenkeyless board gives you more room for your mouse, so that you can move it freely without having to push your keyboard over so far that your WASD hand ends up awkwardly bent. In an ideal keyboard and mouse setup, both wrists are straight, which is hard to do with a full-size keyboard.

Mechanical keyboards are fashionable at the moment, so it's not hard to find all shapes and sizes of them. Our recommended ergonomic gaming keyboard is the Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB, a compact, tenkeyless split keyboard. 

Hey, you can use two mice

I don't know why it never occurred to me that I could own more than one mouse, but when PC Gamer global EIC Evan Lahti mentioned to me that he had two hooked up to his PC at once, I was taken aback. That's allowed?

Of course it is, and it might be a good idea if you work at your desk when you're not playing games at it. For example, you could use this Kensington trackball mouse for work, and then switch to your gaming mouse in the evening. That way, your arm, wrist, and hand aren't always in the same position, making the same movements.

Adjust your chair to the right height

Your elbows should be about level with your desk so that your arms are bent at right angles when you're using your mouse and keyboard. Once you've adjusted your chair accordingly, you may have to make some other adjustments so that:

• Your knees are bent 90 degrees and your feet are flat on the ground. If this isn't possible due to the height of your desk, put a box or stool under your feet. 
• You don't have to bend your neck up to see your monitor. The top of your display should be at around eye level, or slightly higher.

Read more desk ergonomics advice in this article, for which we consulted with a physical therapist.

If your chair isn't adjustable, or you just want a more comfortable one, we have a bunch of recommendations in our guide to the best gaming and desk chairs.

Stuff a pillow behind your back

Don't have a fancy chair with lumbar support? Me either. While built-in lumbar support is definitely what we recommend, you can approximate it by stuffing a small pillow between your lower back and the chair (or a small blanket, or a rolled up sweater). It can be hard to get the size and positioning just right, but unless it's pushing your torso too far forward (in which case, try a different pillow), it's better than nothing.

For a semi-permanent solution, cut a series of small, vertical slits across the top and bottom edges of the pillow case. Thread ribbons through them, and then tie the pillow to the chair back. 

Take your wallet out of your back pocket

If you keep a wallet in your back pocket, take it out and put it on your desk before you sit down. By sitting on it, you're tilting your pelvis and possibly putting unnecessary stress on your back or pinching a nerve. "You could develop pain, patterns of alternately tight or weak muscles, and even altered breathing patterns" by constantly sitting on a lump, according to physical therapist Dr Caitlin McGee, who specializes in gaming-related health at 1HP Gaming.

After kicking the habit of sitting on my wallet, I felt a noticeable improvement in my comfort.

Get little desk fan with fabric blades

It will cool your sweaty hands and face on hot days, and you can stick your finger in between the fabric blades and enjoy the sensation of fan blades thwapping your finger, as we all do.

Chris Livingston's pick is the Vornado Zippi Small Personal Fan, which his cat also enjoys.

Get a plant

You don't see a lot of PC gaming desks with plants on them, and that's too bad. Plants are nice, and a variety of studies show that being around them and caring for them can reduce stress—with the caveat that a fern will not turn an easily-tilted player into a guru of not-yelling-about-hitboxes-over-Discord. For example, a 2017 study on plants in the workplace concluded that they offer "some degree of stress reduction," but that further research is needed.

Even if plants aren't miracles, I think most will agree that they are pleasant things. They have nice colors, and sometimes they smell nice. Putting one on your desk, even a small one, suggests that you are thoughtful enough to keep something other than yourself alive, and you may find comfort in that—unless you kill the plant, in which case you can spin it into a lesson about the fragility of life.

Point is: If you have space, a plant placed on or near your desk is at best a stress reliever and at a worst a nice thing to have.

Get a good water bottle 

I always have something to drink at my desk. At my worst, it's a Red Bull or Diet Coke. At my best, it's water or tea. I feel significantly better (and sleep easier) when I shun the Bad Drinks and stick with the water and tea, but the Bad Drinks sing a siren-like song from gas station and grocery store fridges, and if I let my guard down the fizzy acid garbage ends up in my fridge and then in my mouth. 

Buying a water bottle helped. I find that usually all I need is a sip of water to satisfy the urge that would otherwise cause me to head to the fridge and pop open a can of something. Yeah, I could just get a glass of water instead, but I find that having a sealed bottle next to me at all times is more effective at dousing cravings for aspartame.

If you want a really nice vacuum insulated bottle for hot drinks, too, check out Zojirushi's selection. Wes likes the Zojirushi 20 oz Stainless Steel Mug, which is $28 on Amazon. Otherwise, Chris is happy with his glass water bottle. I used a plastic one for a while, but it imparted a plasticy taste on my water so I ditched it.

This is it, this is my Hotel California moment. Turns out the cramped little terrace I'm currently set up in is now my forever home, because thanks to the Lian Li DK-04F gaming desk I'm never going to be able to move anywhere else. At least not without some serious dismantling, a probable hernia, and potentially one of those mechanic's cranes they use to lift engine blocks out of cars.

But it is arguably the best gaming desk, and one that has given my home office environment the ultimate upgrade having used it over the last few weeks exclusively as both my place of work and point of play. The Lian Li DK-04F is a delicious bit of engineering, at once a gaming desk but also an industrially beautiful chassis that can either show off your glorious PC components, or else hide the mess you've made of cable tidying beneath a frosted RGB glow.

The Lian Li chassis/desk has become more than that to me too. It's now part of my component photo studio, it's responsible for making my valuable PC parts ultra-secure, and has actually performed the miracle of healing on me too. It's like the messiah desk or something. But, I mean, for $1,500 (£1,300) you'd kinda hope it would give you something more than just a place to rest your keyboard, mouse, and monitors.

But at first all it gave me was a little panic. 

"Can I just check what the access is like to your business address," says the nice lady from the distribution company. "We need to make sure there's enough space for the lorry to park up so we can unload the pallet."

Business address? Pallet?!

I live in suburban Bath, a quaint rolling vista of Victorian terraces, sub-alcoholic students, and narrow, winding streets. It's a UNESCO world heritage site and not the sort of place that offers easy access for large scale articulated vehicles. And we've all played enough Euro Truck Sim 2 to know how that goes.

"Okay, we'll make sure to send an 18 Tonne truck with the pallet instead," she says finally, noting the rising panic in my responses.

Jacob suggests maybe it's like those people who mistakenly get sent a box of RTX 2080s instead of just the one… and that I'm actually getting a pallet full of massive gaming desks. That doesn't help the fraying nerves. Thankfully while it does arrive on a pallet, and with a nightmarish mass of cardboard packaging, it's just a single unit. And doubly thankfully Lian Li has shipped me the DK-04F and not the frankly unwieldy DK-05F which can house two liquid-cooled PCs inside its capacious innards.

Essentially there are only four parts to assemble with this gaming desk. The main chassis itself, the two telescopic legs, and the tempered glass desktop. Telescopic? Oh yes, this is a motorised sitting/standing desk, but I'll come back to that li'l nugget of joy in a minute. On the whole the DK-04F is relatively easy to assemble, the only issue being how you suspend the very heavy aluminium body while you struggle to get the ultra-heavy iron legs into place.

From there it's classic Lian Li. I've built systems into enough Lian Li chassis in my time to know what I'm getting myself into. That's sliced fingers, scraped knuckles, and machined screw holes that don't quite match up. Luckily the few screw holes that don't aren't a huge issue because there are a vast number of screws holding the thing together. It's nothing if not robust.

Pro-tip: get yourself an electric screwdriver. You might strip a couple screws here and there, but it'll take at least half the time.

But once the legs are in place, connected to the desk's own power supply, and the desktop lid is in place, you're good to go. And by that I mean you're good to build your PC inside it… and that way lies more pleasure and pain. More cut digits, more screwdriving, but at the end of it all a gaming PC that will always have you smiling beatifically as you follow its whirrs up and down.

Sure, I had issues getting my rig inside. Mostly because the old Corsair H100i liquid chip-chiller I have attached to the 7900X CPU has tubing that's just a little too short to be screwed into place over the chassis' air vents. That means it's essentially just free-roaming inside.

It still works but is rather unsightly, though is going to soon be replaced by something a little more fitted. But that's not the only thing that looks a little less than ideal. I'm no pro-builder, I just want to get things inside, get them running, and not spend an age making it super tidy. But because of all the myriad chassis fans and RGB LED strips that come as part of the DK-04F package, and the extensive front panel controls, there is a lot of cabling inside the case. 

And it doesn't look great in there right now.

Which is why the switchable tempered glass desktop is such a wonderful thing. At the touch of a button it can go from crystal clear to perfectly opaque. It means I can shut out the disgusting mess of wiring I've let loose inside until I get around to sorting out the cooler, and am just left with a soothing RGB underglow slowly fluttering around beneath my keyboard and mouse.

And if I shift my peripherals to the side it becomes the perfect background for a little product shoot, to which my Core i9 10900K review can attest. Lovely stuff.

Having the DK-04F being height adjustable from the off, thanks to those motorised legs, means you can get it to a comfortable height to work in. No more building PCs cross legged on the floor for me, which is good because this portly frame, descending disgracefully into middle age, is not dealing brilliantly with such limb contortions right now.

It's precisely that adjustability of the Lian Li DK-04F which has made it become some sort of miracle cure. Since the birth of my son the home office has been designated for a completely antithetical use, and I've been relegated to a dark corner of the dining room. Until now my PC was encased in the wonderful Corsair Crystal 280X—one of the best mini-ITX chassis around—and jammed under a jury-rigged desktop where I couldn't squeeze my legs beneath. 

With the perpetual working from home situation now foisted upon us that means I've spent most of my recent life pushed up against a set of draws, bending my legs, neck, spine out of place to bash at a keyboard for many hours a day. As a result I've been waking up in agony (generally between 5am and 6am, thanks Charlie) with little respite throughout the day.

Now, I love codeine as much as the next inveterate pill-popper, but the mix of being able to stand at my desk comfortably, as well as get my legs directly under the desktop when I want to sit down, has rendered its regular use unnecessary. My posture has infinitely improved, and so has my sleep. Ten month-old baby notwithstanding.

There are up and down buttons to adjust the height of the desk on the fly, but also quickly and easily stored and activated presets too. The four buttons allow you to save different working heights at will and mean you can go from standing to sitting, and back, at just the press of a button. And the action is sublime too. Sometimes I'll just press the button to watch it go up and down, with an all-too satisfying whirrrrrrr.

Apparently it's eminently distracting during video meetings, but I'm cool with that.

As well as correcting my spine, the DK-04F has also ensured my pricey PC components are ultra-secure. As much as I love that micro-ATX Corsair 280X chassis, its compact design makes it easily portable. Anyone jimmying the front door could have wandered off with my expensive gaming rig in a second. As referenced earlier, now they're going to need a crane to get the damned thing out of my home.

Seriously the security aspects of this gaming desk have been completely ignored in Lian Li's marketing material about it. I'd definitely have it as at least a bullet point on the product page - "Secure your gaming rig against would-be thieves with the DK-04F." You can have that one for free, guys.

Well, so long as you don't make me extricate my components from the chassis and try and figure out how to package this bad boy back up again. Though maybe you'd be doing me a favour… one day I will want to move house.

A piece of ergonomics advice we hear frequently is that we shouldn't stay in the same position for too long. "Your best posture is your next posture" is the catchy way physical therapist Dr Caitlin McGee put it to us recently. One way to change things up is with an adjustable desk which allows you to easily switch from sitting to standing and back again—a desk like this 'Workstream' desk, which is currently on sale for $259.99, $90 off its regular price. 

The desk is equipped with a "quiet" electric motor to make it easy to adjust: just press the up and down buttons. Once you've found the perfect height, you can save it to one of three programmable presets. There's also a timer button, in case you want to be reminded at certain times to stand up (adjustable in half-hour increments).

At full height, the desk stands 49.6 inches. The actual surface measures 47.2 x 29.1 inches with a weight capacity rated at 121 pounds. Part of the surface also tilts, if you want it to—that part is adjustable with a pneumatic level, up to a 30-degree incline.

This is a great price for a standing desk with a motor. Prices vary by make and model, with the some of the more expensive options running several hundred dollars higher, like the Evodesk we reviewed a few years ago.

Alternatively, you can turn your desk into a standing desk for work and gaming with a little elbow grease and creativity, if you'd rather go that route.

Lian Li has gone and updated the motorized standing desk it launched four years ago, with the new version coming in two sizes. The larger DK-05F (shown above) can fit two complete liquid cooled PCs inside and costs an even $2,000, whereas the smaller DK-04F has room for a single PC and costs $1,499.99.

Both are available to preorder at Newegg and release on April 28. Neither one is cheap, obviously, but if it weren't for pesky things like rent and food, I'd be all over something like this.

Compared to the original DK-04 from 2016, these new models offer more control over the fans and RGB lighting. They also feature an 8mm tempered glass top that can go from transparent to opaque (well, foggy) with the press of a button.

That seems like something straight out of the Q Branch playbook, only less lethal than the gadgets that James Bond normally has access to—he could hide secret documents in the DK-05F/DK-04F, whereas I'd just flip the switch to conceal my messy cable management.

The desks are built from "premium aluminum" and are height adjustable from 69cm (~27 inches) to 117cm (~46 inches) "for a comfortable standing position, even for a tall person." Unless you're Shaquille O'Neal, I imagine.

It looks like there is plenty of elbow room with these desks. They both are compatible with up to an E-ATX motheboard (or two, in the case of the DK-05F), with removable motherboard trays to make building a little bit easier. They also can swallow graphics cards up to 400mm (~15.7 inches) long and CPU coolers up to 185mm (~7.28 inches) high.

There's lots of space for storage drives, too—the DK-04F can hold up to nine 3.5-inch HDDs or six 3.5-inch HDDs and three 2.5-inch SSDs, and the DK-05F sports eight 3.5-inch/2.5-inch drive bays.

As with the original model, there are four customizable presets to save specific height adjustments. Otherwise, the up and down arrows get it going.

In addition to being available at Newegg, you can find these desks at OverclockersUK—it costs £1,299.95 for the DK-04F and £1,799.99 for the DK-05F.

Maybe we should track the best gaming desks like we do for gaming chairs and everything else. If we did, this beastly liquid cooled setup that OverclockersUK put together would be in contention, assuming we were to toss out any sense of affordability or responsible spending. That's because it costs £11,299.99 (over $14,000).

I spent more on my car several years ago, but not much more. Depending on your negotiating skills and the specific model, you could walk out of a Chevy or Ford dealership with a brand new vehicle having spent less. So what justifies that kind of price tag in a PC?

The novelty of a motorized desk pulling double-duty as a case is part of it. So is the fact that this setup is water cooled. As to the actual hardware, here's a look at the specs:

• Lian Li DK-05X 
• Intel Core i9-7900X
• Asus ROG Rampage Extreme X299
• 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4-3200 RAM
• 2x Asus GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 
• Samsung 960 EVO 512GB NVMe SSD
• Samsung 870 EVO SSD
• Samsung 870 EVO SSD or WD Black 7200RPM HDD
• 1600W 80 Plus Platinum PSU
• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

The processor is "cherry picked" and overclocked to at least 4.6GHz (which is pretty average for a 7900X, not to mention it's a previous gen part—eg, not the i9-9900X). A full custom liquid cooling loop keeps the CPU and both GPUs from overheating. Less clear is the actual storage arrangement—there's no mention of the size of the secondary SSD, and I opted not to buy this thing to find out.

This is not a new entry, but one that was brought to my attention by Intel, which is feeling the heat from AMD and its third-generation Ryzen lineup right now.

“Most of our flagship systems are hefty beasts, swallowing up the space on your desk because they rarely fit under it—nor, really, would you want to hide such stunning bits of kit under a desk," OverclockersUK systems manager Scott Bentley told Intel. "So we started to look at alternatives to the standard super-tower or monster cube style systems. The best way to build a high performance, hero PC without taking up a load of space on the desk? Put it in the desk!"

Bentley says the system was originally built for a gaming content creator. Hence the decision to build around a binned Core i9-7900X, which he says "offers a good balance between multitasking, multi-core workloads, and clockspeed-hungry gaming workloads."

Implementing a full liquid cooling loop was not easy. To do it, OverclockersUK crafted three separate custom acrylic passthrough plates to mediate the flow of the liquid, rather than having long runs of tubing running the length of the desk.

"The final design includes a central fluid distribution plate, which handles the flow of fluid to and from the pumps, reservoirs, and radiators," Bentley said. "Located just under the glass, in the middle of the chassis, it doubles as a bit of a centerpiece for the build. There is then a third plate, floating above the motherboard, which moves the fluid from the distribution plate to the components."

It's pretty insane, but believe it or not, the price actually pales in comparison to another system OverclockersUK sells—the 8Pack Orion X2 that I wrote about earlier this year is still available for £32,999.99 (over $41,000).

Are you sitting down? You wouldn't have to if you owned Thermaltake's Level 20 RGB Battlestation Gaming Desk, which in plain speak is a motorized desk for sitting or standing—it's your choice. It's also an extremely large mouse pad, making it a veritable bargain at $1,199.99 (plus shipping) to park the best gaming mouse on!

Okay, maybe it's not exactly a bargain (it's also $100 higher than the MSRP Thermaltake announced at CES). However, it is all of those other things—a height-adjustable desk with an electric motor, integrated RGB lighting, and a mouse pad that looks large enough to accommodate rodents as big as the capybara. No company has made an actual mouse that size yet, but this Battlestation ensures you're ready if and when one ever exists.

The height can be adjusted from 27.5 inches (for sitting) up to 43.3 inches (for standing, or still for sitting if you're Shaq). There is a six-button controller on the front with a digital display. Among them are two large ascend and descend buttons, along with four smaller buttons to select between preconfigured height settings. That's fancier than my car, which just has a bar underneath the seat for adjusting its position.

Thermaltake's adjustable desk is 64.9 inches wide and 29.5 inches deep. The frame is made from aluminum and supports up to 330 pounds—plenty enough for a burly desktop tower, a big monitor, and probably a full keg of beer, if you're so inclined.

Some of the press images show a mouse sitting atop a mouse pad, though one is hardly needed—the entire surface is a full cloth mouse pad in and of itself.

"It is constructed with a solid sewing edge design to ensure durability, prevent peeling or warping of the mouse pad and uses a special anti-slip rubber base to prevent any slippage. In addition, it is removable for cleaning and maintenance," Thermaltake says.

In that sense, Thermaltake can accurately call this a "gaming desk" rather than leaning on RGB lighting alone, which it also has—there are 20 customizable lighting zones and 8 dynamic lighting effects, all controllable via Thermaltake's iTake software. The RGB lighting can also be synchronized with the company's TT RGB Plus products.

Thermaltake is selling its Battlestation direct to customers. Depending on where you live and how much of a hurry you are to receive one, shipping costs can be significant. In my neck of the woods (Tennessee), shipping options range from $159.10 for standard shipping to $1,247.40 for Next Day Air Saver (UPS).

There's also a much cheaper version of the Level 20 GT Battlestation that lacks an electric motor and RGB lighting, but otherwise offers the same features. It sells for $399.99 on Thermaltake's website.

I'm trying to stay hopeful, but it's hard. Of all humanity's late-capitalist artifacts to eventually collect at the bottom the boiling oceans, the unEvn ONE will probably take the longest to dissolve. It's an all-in-one portable gaming desk, a chunky Game Boy that can melt Crysis and a human spinal cord at once.  

It's a desk capable of housing everything you need to play games, and it folds up into a jagged, lopsided backpack so you can play it anywhere, like in any of the empty rooms formerly occupied by your family, the back of a large van, or even a derelict hospital. 

Anyway, here's all the shit that fits in this thing:

• Chassis for PC components
• Monitor
• Monitor mount
• Mouse and keyboard
• Misc cables
• Whatever shameful objects will fit in the locked drawer

I'm trying to think of legitimate use cases for this thing, and I'm failing. I suppose if you know dozens of people that still want to host LAN parties and have a couple thousand bucks to sleep off, then having some of these suckers on tap would save setup time, assuming there's no static venue for your meetups. 

The unEvn ONE is billed as an esports product, but esports organizations provide desktops for their competitions. I suppose if I'm an organizer of those events, I might look to the unEvn as a simpler way to setup and breakdown a given tourney, but at $2500 just for the desk (monitor and components aren't included), I'm also hugging my budget like a dying dog. Not yet, old friend. Not yet. 

Every mundane feature of the thing is treated like an architectural breakthrough. I mean, it apparently took a team of engineers and gamers to give the desk a curved edge. All that brain space and expensive schooling to produce two extra inches between gut and desk just to simplify reaching for the mouse and keyboard, which aren't locked in place anyway. Note the dotted line following the curve to indicate that this is, indeed, a curve. Finally, I can watch my groin pulse and glow as I game.  

I haven't even addressed the name: unEvn ONE. It goes for gamer-ese so hard that it's become an inversion of the trope, indecipherable nonsense that looks like nothing while saying nothing. Take a cue from Razer and just name it after an animal. Pick any alloy and replace a letter or two with numbers. How you name an object whose defining qualitative feature is the evenness of its surface 'uneven' boggles the mind. 

And besides the stress it looks like it'll put on your spine, or how red it'll leave your ass as it bounces from cheek to cheek with every step, the unEvn's greatest failure is that lugging it around is no simpler than carrying a tower and monitor to-and-fro. It's only convenience is that it's also a desk. If carrying around a bulky desk is worth $2500 then my lawn chairs are severely under-priced. My recommendation: Arms and bags. Give 'em a shot. 

Still, I'm afraid there's nothing to prevent another dumb computer thing from existing. With over $10,000 of the $40,000 Kickstarter goal already met and 34 days to go, the unEvn is on pace to litter the ocean floors imminently. Let's just hope all that space makes for a nice, portable fish home. 

There are real benefits to standing at your desk rather than sitting down all day, and we've spent plenty of time gaming while standing ourselves. And while research around standing vs. sitting is still evolving, the common wisdom is that you shouldn't be sitting or standing all day: you should be doing both. But adjustable desks that can be used for both sitting and standing are expensive. When you could easily use that money to buy a new graphics card or monitor, it feels hard to justify the expense.

The good news is there are a few ways around that expense. Changing your desk to let you stand while you work and play doesn't have to cost a bundle. Here are our recommendations for setting up a practical sit-stand desk for work and gaming across a number of budgets. We'll start with our favorite: the option that costs nothing.

Make a standing desk with what you have - Free

One of the best ways to try out the benefits of a standing desk is to make one yourself. That might sound complicated, but it can be as simple and affordable as you want it to be. It can even cost you absolutely nothing if you're creative (or desperate) enough.

There are three important components to a standing desk for PC gamers: elevating the mouse, keyboard, and monitor(s). Anything else can stay where it is, as long as all the cables still reach. If you can find some materials around the house and put them under those things to raise them to your respective standing height, you have built yourself a standing desk. It may not look pretty, but your posture? That'll be looking real nice.

This method is quick, easy, and entirely customizable. You can use bricks, wood, a nest of tables, or perhaps the most versatile solution of all: books. As if Moby Dick wasn't already great enough. You may need to do some swapping back and forth to get everything to the correct height. If you have the books on hand, the whole construction process can take less than half an hour. That's, like, 0.05% of a Moby Dick read. Easy.

There are a few downsides to this method. The process is reversible, but fiddly: you won't want to convert between sitting and standing like this on a daily basis. If you don't have the right size books (or other elevating materials) you may find multi-monitor setups aren't quite the same height as one another, and it's not the best-looking solution. But it is cheap and just about anyone can do it. If you want to see whether you actually like the standing desk experience before shelling out for one of the more expensive solutions below, it's a great place to start. And if you get serious and actually want to build a full desk from scratch, there are tons of tutorial on YouTube to choose from.

Sit-stand riser platform - $100+

The biggest let-down of the true DIY option above is that you can't easily switch from sitting to standing and back again. The sit-stand riser platform fixes that at a fraction of the cost of a full sit-stand desk.

There are a number of solutions out there in this bracket, some costing hundreds of dollars, but there are also a number of more affordable options. The Vivo Sit Stand Converter ($100) is one of the most economical and with a little effort can transition from sitting to standing height in one smooth motion. Treat it like an extremely real, functional version of Optimus Prime. 

There are more elaborate versions that include specialized keyboard and mouse trays at different heights from your monitor, ones with built-in monitor mounts and larger desk surfaces, like the Conquer Ergonomic Workstation ($122). But if cost is a major factor for you, then some of the entry-level riser platforms provide you everything you need to enjoy most of the benefits of a proper sit-stand desk.

There are still some letdowns with this kind of system. Your overall desk surface space is significantly reduced: risers can take up a lot of room and they tend to have much smaller surfaces than your full desk. They also have weight limits, which may restrict you to a single monitor, and all but the most expensive options require manual operation, which means you will need to roll up your sleeves each time you make an adjustment. But considering how much cheaper they are than a full standing desk, risers are a fantastic solution.

Frame-only sit-stand desks - $180 - $400

If converting your existing desk into something that allows you to stand and sit isn't for you, how about repurposing it instead? If you already have a decent sized desk you can save yourself a lot of money by buying a sit-stand desk frame and attaching your existing desk surface to it. A pile of Moby Dicks and functional Transformers can't quite match up.

Since you are technically buying a sit-stand desk but without the costly surface itself, you tend to save some money with this option. There are manual sit-stand desk frames that start at around $180, like the Vivo Manual Stand Up Desk Frame ($180), and much more costly electric options like the Seville Classics Airlift S3 frame ($400).

The entry-level options tend to only rise so far, have thinner and less supportive frames overall, and are almost always manually operated—meaning to lift and lower the desk you'll have to flex some muscle on the built-in crank handle. Alternatively, the expensive options will have greater support for different heights, electric motors in the legs and a memory module so you can return to your preferred height at the touch of a button.

Whether you opt for a more affordable option or not though, the process of building one of these desks is much the same. You put the frame together and then use (the usually provided) screws to fasten your old desk's surface to the frame. Before you go this route, make sure your existing desk has removable legs and isn't one big welded piece, so it can be screwed into the new sit-stand base. A simple wooden top is the ideal, but any flat surface should do. If you can find a copy of Moby Dick long and wide enough, about the size of a door, it would also work. 

Manual sit-stand desks - $200+

These are basically the all-in-one version of the manual desk frames discussed above, with a desk topper included. A full sit-stand desk that can be manipulated to both positions using the built-in crank handle. 

They aren't as expensive as electric adjustable desks and some, like the Devaise Adjustable Standing Desk ($215), are even cheaper than some electric standalone frames, but they are certainly more expensive than standalone manual frames. What you gain with that additional cost is a guarantee that your desk surface will fit the frame exactly. You'll likely still need to assemble the desk, so you don't entirely get out of any DIY work by paying that bit extra. Tell yourself it's just 'Adult Lego' and fight through the terrible knowledge that every second spent building a desk is one you could spend building actual Lego. 

Labor aside, the only real downside to this kind of desk is that it still requires manual operation. It's as customizable as any of the others, but does lack the convenience and smart features of electric standing desks.

Electric sit-stand desks - $350+

This is the all-out, money's-no-object option. Electric sit-stand desks are the top-tier of adjustable desks you can buy. They let you customize the height of your desk with the touch of a button and support a variety of heights. One big advantage of spending the money on one: you'll be more likely to switch between standing and sitting, without the effort of a handcrank in your way. They can run into the thousands of dollars if you want the best of the best. 

But you don't have to spend anywhere near that much. Cheaper models, like the Clevr Stand Up Workstation ($370) tend to have a reduced overall height—meaning taller people will likely need to spend a little more—and feature single motors which aren't as fast or as load-bearing. More expensive options tend to offer more powerful motors or nicer quality desk materials. Some even have a tablet for certain controls and reminders, like the Autonomous' Smart Desk 3 ($500)

Whether you opt for one of these pre-packaged solutions or one of the more affordable alternatives, having a sit-stand desk can help alleviate some of the most frustrating negative aspects of being stationary for long periods of time, whether you're working or playing. 

Couch gaming on living room PCs is entering a golden age, and no longer just for games that use controllers. It’s easier than ever to play everything from shooters to digital card games to RTSes with full mouse and keyboard controls thanks to lapboards—keyboards with a built-in mousepad area, aka a desk away from your desk. 

We tested lapboards made by PC gaming peripheral makers Roccat, Corsair, and Razer to see how they stacked up against in each other in terms of comfort, control, and ease of use. And after extended use, the Roccat Sova MK still came out on top.

The best lapboard

• Comfortable for your lap and wrists
• More than enough mouse space
• Light enough to readjust and store easily

• Poor keyboard layout

The Roccat Sova, also available in a membrane version, is the classic middle of the road option when it comes to gaming lapboards. It’s smaller and cheaper than the Corsair Lapdog and more capable than the Razer Turret. You can absolutely get better keyboards for less money, but the Sova’s cushions, mousepad, and wrist wrest make it the best possible way to get a desktop experience while sitting on your couch. 

The Sova has compromised exactly where it needs to in order to make a comfortable lapboard. Although it is big, the size and weight aren’t nearly as cumbersome as the Lapdog. It’s easy to pick up and put down, thanks in part to a cord clip that snaps onto the top of the board and makes sure your mouse doesn’t slide away. The pads for your legs aren’t the most comfortable things in the world, but are more than enough to make using the Sova for long periods of time manageable. 

The mousepad area on the Sova is a rough matte finish, and while it isn’t as big as a regular-sized gaming mousepad (the Sova mousepad measures roughly 11” by 9.5”) it was definitely large enough for any game I played. Similar to the Lapdog, you’ll probably only feel limited if you play FPSes at an incredibly low DPI and are used to swiping across a huge playmat. Unfortunately, the angle of the Sova made my mouse slide down the pad a little almost every time I took my hand off of it, making that cord clip a necessity rather than an option. Finding a spot that was comfortable and stable both while playing and resting was a bit of a balancing act.

The keyboard itself isn’t the best mechanical keyboard I’ve ever used, but it was more than good enough for being mounted in a lapboard. It uses TTC Brown mechanical switches. Roccat also sells a membrane version for less. While the Sova’s layout was fine for games that use WASD, it was a little odd for anything relying on the arrow keys. Instead of being to the right of the QWERTY section of the keyboard like usual, the arrows are tucked under the right Enter key, shortening right Shift, right Ctrl, and removing the right FN key to make room. 

Additionally, the shorter width means there are no gaps between each set of four Function keys, making them harder to find at a glance. It’s a worse layout than your average keyboard, but it’s done this way to allow the lapboard to be shorter overall—a point I really appreciated when compared to the Lapdog. And the fact that the keyboard is built directly into the board also means that it is positioned for the wrist rest nicely.

And oh man does that wrist rest help. I was initially unsure about how comfortable the Sova was on my keyboard hand, but after resting it on the sharp edge of the Lapdog (more on that later), I was begging for the Sova’s wrist rest. The one I used was simply hard plastic, but the rest, mousepad, and cushions are replaceable, and Roccat even says you’ll be able to 3D print your own accessories for the Sova. I didn’t really get to sample this customizability, but it’s an appealing feature for a peripheral everyone will want to use a little differently.  

The Sova is generally an easy-to-use lapboard, but it is a big piece of plastic that will be sitting around in your living room. Even if it doesn’t have much of an effect on your gameplay experience, finding a spot to store a lapboard like this is important. Razer's Turret is much smaller and designed to be easily stored, but the Sova is thinner than Corsair's Lapdog and doesn’t detach into two pieces. That made it much easier for me to find a place for it in my living room when not in use. The USB cable that plugs into the computer also has a point where it can disconnect (similar to a wired Xbox 360 controller) close to the board itself, which made putting away the cord a lot easier.

At the end of all my testing, the Roccat Sova was the lapboard I wanted to keep using. It was the most comfortable across any type of game, and was light and easy enough to move that it wasn’t too bad to use for general computer browsing as well. I didn’t get a chance to try the membrane keyboard version (which shares the same shape and size, so I imagine may be a good cheaper option for those who don’t mind membrane) but the Sova MK is a great way to get a desktop level gaming experience on a living room PC. And while Roccat is planning a wireless version for the future, it'll definitely cost a premium over the wired models.

The best wireless lapboard

• Wireless, light, and easy to use
• Ideal for slower games and browsing

• A small mouse and mousepad area
• Flat keyboard not great for fast games

The Razer Turret is in an interesting position on this list, as it’s the only one of the three lapboards that is wireless. It’s also the smallest by a significant margin. For some, the Turret will be the only logical choice thanks to these unique advantages, while others won’t even consider it due to the flat keyboard and smaller mouse area. But one thing that’s undeniable: in distinctly Razer fashion, the Turret is the classiest option out there.

Size is not to be underestimated as a factor in these tests. Sure, you want a desktop experience on the couch, but you also don’t want a big hunk of plastic taking up space in your living room. The Lapdog and the Sova are hard to hide, and you’ll almost definitely need to dedicate a spot specifically for storing them when they aren’t in use. The turret not only folds up, it comes with a neat little stand for both the mouse and keyboard that displays them nicely while they charge. Because of this, I never had a problem with battery life for either device, which Razer says is up to 40 hours on the mouse and a whopping four months on the keyboard, and they never got in my way.

Being wireless—with the mouse and keyboard sharing a single USB dongle—means I didn’t have a thick cord running from my couch to my TV every time I wanted to play games, and I didn’t notice any wireless lag on either device. I do wish the Turret keyboard had extra USB plugs on it like the Sova or Lapdog, because USB cords for headsets, mics, or wired mice to replace the stock one rarely reached all the way to my TV. Things like wires and storage size don’t directly affect your gaming experience, but they are important factors to those who want their PC to be part of the living room, rather than take it over entirely. 

That being said, the Turret is not really what you’d think of as a “gaming” keyboard. It’s essentially the same kind of flat chiclet keyboard you’d find on a MacBook laptop, with a bit more spring to each key press. It works well and will be more than enough for those not looking to play fast-paced games on it, but it was a little bit of a problem when I tried to play Overwatch or Warframe. The flatness of the keys and the lapboard overall meant I had to twist my hand slightly to hit a certain combinations of keys, like pressing Q while keeping my fingers on WASD. It wasn’t terrible, but it was noticeably more difficult than using a full-sized keyboard.

The mouse that comes with the Turret is another bit that will work fine for some and not at all for others. It’s a nice shape, ambidextrous with two buttons on either side and a good amount of weight to it, but it’s so small that it physically hurt my hand to use. I am personally used to palming larger mice, and the Turret mouse seems to be more suited for gamers partial to using the “claw grip” with nothing but their fingertips touching it. It's a stubby mouse. But its size does pair nicely with the mousepad, and I love that it's very slightly magnetized to it so it won’t slip off.  

The mousepad area is a smoother finish than the Sova and Lapdog and is significantly smaller, measuring roughly 7.5” wide by 4.5” tall, but it provided more than enough room to use with a higher sensitivity mouse and wrist motions. If you are accustomed to a lower DPI while using the whole pad with sweeping elbow motions, this isn’t the lapboard for you, but I never found myself wanting for more mouse space, even when playing shooters. That is until I finally abandoned the included mouse and plugged in a larger one, which is when I almost ran out of vertical space without even moving it! The left and right motions were fine, but top to bottom risked the edges of the mouse going off the pad. 

So it’s tough say where the Razer Turret lands. It’s a fantastic small form factor lapboard for using a mouse and keyboard on the couch, but only if you are looking for some very specific things. I wouldn’t reach for the Turret to play FPSes or action games, but not having to fumble with wires coming out of a piece of plastic the size of a skateboard on my lap means I’d prefer it for slower games, or just generally using my PC. The Turret doesn’t provide a high-end gaming experience compared to its competitors, but it provides an ease of use and portability that they don’t come anywhere near.  

The Corsair Lapdog

• Uses the fantastic Corsair K70 or K65 keyboard

• Left wrist rests on a sharp edge
• Very cumbersome and big
• Expensive, and doesn't even include the keyboard

The Corsair Lapdog is the only lapboard on this list that doesn’t actually come with a keyboard. And seeing as it costs the same amount of money for what is essentially an empty tray, it’s hard to recommend for anybody who doesn’t already have the Corsair keyboard to go with it. And even then, the Lapdog can be inconvenient and uncomfortable to use.

Only two types of keyboards will fit in the Lapdog: The Corsair K70 or its slightly smaller version, the Corsair K65. And if you are currently using a K70 or K65 on your desktop computer, it’s not easy to swap in and out of the Lapdog frame. I was hoping the keyboard might quickly snap into place, easily moving from desk to couch, but installing it instead required I unscrew panels held down with six hex screws, put it in place, and then screw the panels back on. It’s not difficult, but it is a process that impedes trying to use a single keyboard for both setups.

The inconveniences don’t stop there. The two extra USB ports on the right side of the Lapdog require a power cord be plugged into an outlet to function. The foam cushion on the bottom of the lapboard attaches with magnets so you can decide whether you want to use it or not, but the magnets are just a little too weak, making the two halves slide apart fairly easily when I tried to move or readjust it on my lap. The whole thing is uncompromising in its design—power to the USBs allows them to charge things faster, for example—which would be noble if it weren’t also so uncomfortable to use.

Unlike the Sova, the Lapdog doesn’t have any sort of wrist rest. The extra space created by the mousepad being taller than the keyboard was put above the keyboard instead of below it, which looks pretty, but ends up just being wasted space. Instead of being on a pad, my hand in the WASD position was resting on the slightly sharp metal edge of the Lapdog tray. It’s honestly surprising to me that anyone could have tried playing an FPS with their hand in that position and not seen it as a problem. Ironically, I actually had to take off the K65’s removable wrist rest to fit it into the Lapdog. 

With all of those problems, it has to be said that the K65 and K70 are genuinely better keyboards than what’s built into the Sova. The mousepad areas are nearly identical materials, both a rough matte finish, but the Lapdog's is slightly larger. That bigger area and better keyboard was noticeably nicer to play on when trying Overwatch and other shooters—or it would have been, if the Lapdog frame wasn’t grinding into my hand the whole time. It’s a better high-end gaming product hamstrung by poor design.

That larger mousepad and room for a numpad keyboard come at another cost, as the Lapdog is the biggest of the three options by a fair amount—both in length and thickness, thanks to that removable cushion. The cushion is comfortable, with a bump in the center of it meant to sit between my legs. But I found myself wanting the lapboard to be a few inches to the right of center, so the bump wasn’t always in the right spot. It also meant I couldn’t set the lapboard down flat on my coffee table when I stood up, as it would sometimes tilt to one side and the mouse would slide off. I ended up finding the whole thing easier to use without the cushion, which then took up more space somewhere else in my living room. 

Corsair recently dropped the price of the Lapdog down to a more palatable $60 on Amazon, which brings the total package—Lapdog and a Corsair keyboard—to competitive levels with Roccat and Razer.

If the Corsair Lapdog had a wrist rest, it would be easy to recommend as a high-end option for people who don’t mind all the little annoyances if it means getting closer to a desktop setup on their couch. But as it stands, those annoyances are hard to ignore when coupled with less-than-ideal usability. I wouldn't recommend the Lapdog to anyone over the Sova or the Turret. 

Further testing

Whether you’re more into FPSes or puzzle games may influence which lapboard is best suited to your gaming needs. But what I can say with full confidence is that any of the three options above are better than a keyboard on your lap and a mousepad on the sofa cushion next to you, and they’re almost definitely better than the cheap wireless keyboards with built-in touchpads you may have seen.

I’ve used the $27 Microsoft Wireless All-In-One Media Keyboard and the $31 Logitech Wireless Touch Keyboard K400, and while both are fine for general computer use, neither is meant for gaming. For starters, neither has a dedicated area for a mouse, and using a touchpad for most games is a form of self-flagellation no one deserves. The keys on both keyboards are flat and squishy, significantly less responsive than that of the Razer Turret. The only thing they have going for them is that that they are a lot cheaper, but know that you get what you pay for—or in this case, miss out on what you aren’t paying for.

As for other high end lapboards, no other PC gaming peripheral manufacturer has entered the race yet. It’s a brand new market for companies like Roccat, Corsair, and Razer, but I imagine others like Logitech or SteelSeries will follow suit if they see success. Also, unfortunately, those of us who use a mouse on the left side of the keyboard are completely out of luck, and we hope to see an ambidextrous option appear at some point. We’ll keep an eye out for any new lapboards that pop-up on the market and be sure to test them out as soon as we can.
 

How we test lapboards

Unlike testing a regular gaming keyboard, there are a lot of unique factors that go into judging a good lapboard. The quality of the keyboard and mousepad are important, along with the ever-present question of price, but I also looked at the comfort of the board on my legs and wrists—especially after longer periods of time. It’s also important to look at the ease of use, setup, and how much space the lapboard takes up in your living room when it’s not in use. There are factors beyond just gaming that are crucial to consider. 

Quality:

As with all high-end gaming components, it must feel good to use. The responsiveness of each key press and quality of the mousepad are just as important as any other factor when comparing your options. It doesn’t matter if a lapboard is perfectly sculpted to fit on your lap if the keyboard feels like garbage to game on. And lapboards have more to get right (or wrong) as they are offering a keyboard and mousepad in one product. 

Comfort:

Using a mouse and keyboard on a couch can be oddly uncomfortable. It puts your body in a very different position than it’s used at a desk, and a good lapboard has to either compensate for that, or be flexible enough to let you find the position best for you. If you’re going to be playing for a long time, the lapboard needs to be comfortable sitting on your legs and not hold your arms and wrists in a position that will strain you over time. Cushions, wrist rests, and being able to move around easily on your lap go a long way to letting you feel at ease while playing.

Ease of use:

In addition to being comfortable, a good lapboard has to be usable—both when you are and aren’t playing games. With the exception of the Razer Turret, these lapboards can be big and heavy, and where you put them when they aren’t in use isn’t something most people think about until they suddenly have a 2+ foot long keyboard tray taking over their coffee table. How easy cables are to manage and if you can get up to use the bathroom without throwing your setup into disarray make a real difference in how willing you’ll be to actually use your lapboard.

Price:

And, of course, cost is king. Luckily, all three options listed above are around the same price point which makes them easier to compare. As I said before, gaming-specific lapboards are a blossoming market, and currently there isn’t really a midrange option. You either go with a very cheap and poor keyboard with a touchpad, or need to hit the $150 mark to get something made with PC gamers in mind. So you might as well make sure your money is worth it and that the lapboard you choose comes with everything you need.

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Like something out of a sci-fi movie, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Future Interfaces Group have developed a proof-of-concept for turning your desktop into a virtual touch display. Granted, we have seen this before, but this particular implementation is closer to what Hollywood often portrays in sci-fi movies, as it goes beyond a simple keyboard interface.

The researchers outlined their "Desktopography" prototype in a paper that will be presented at the Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems in Lisbon, Portugal. In its current form, the device consists of an overhead projector and depth camera shaped like a lamp that beams images onto a desk surface.

What makes this unique is that the images conform to the desk rather than the other way around. For example, if you have a virtual calculator open on your desk and place a soda can on top of it, the beamed image will relocate itself.

"Because physical objects cannot move or resize on their own, the burden of responsiveness falls to the digital elements. Thus, digital applications must employ a variety of strategies to successfully cohabit a work surface with physical artifacts," the paper explains.

The result is an augmented desktop that is far smarter than previous attempts to utilize desk surfaces. In this case, beamed images establish relationships with objects that are on the desk. In doing so, a user can snap a virtual interface to a physical device, such as a laptop. Imagine having a set of gaming macros on your desk. If you snap the gaming keys to your laptop, the virtual interface will follow wherever it goes, as if it is physically attached.

Users can also have multiple interfaces open, each of which can be repositioned, reoriented, and resized as needed. Multi-touch gestures are supported, too.

If this exits the prototype stage and becomes an actual shipping product, we imagine the initial focus will be on productivity applications. However, we can think of different ways this could be handy for gaming. Imagine having an interactive map on your desk surface, one that you can scroll, zoom, and even mark. That could get tricky with a mouse and keyboard setup, but there is potential for developers to get creative.

If you arrange the text from every Build of the Week in a grid, the first column predicted the arrival of the desk over a century ago, back when case mods were made of sticks and mud and powered by mules. ARMAGEDDON, THE SUM OF ALL FEARS—the capitalization is canon— is a massive build with duals monitors that rise at the push of a button, like some behemoth emerging from the underworld to raze the world with fire. The main difference is Armageddon coats the world in chunky industrial aesthetics and good graphics. The horror.

Armageddon comes from Ali Abbas, an acclaimed modder out of Germany. Started in 2012, Abbas finished up 20 projects in the time it took to complete Armageddon. As his first foray into desk mods, Abbas didn’t want to put out another “glass top, LED lit, hardware visual” build that most popular desk builds go for. Instead, he opted for hellfire and brimstone—and some pretty cool features. Turns out, The End of All Things comes with built-in speakers, a concealable keyboard, a webcam, hidden USB hubs, and those lovely rising monitors.

To see more of Abbas’ projects or for more information on Armageddon, check out his website and the official build log.

Armageddon components: 

I couldn’t find the specs listed anywhere, so I gathered what I could from the build log. I’m reaching out to Abbas for clarification. 

• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 480
• Mobo: Maximus VII Ranger
• CPU: Intel i7 (spec unknown)
• SSD: OCZ Vector 180 480 GB

If you like the idea of a standing desk but found Lian Li's DK-04 a little ostentatious for your tastes, you may prefer one of its newest models, the DK-12 or DK-16. Like the DK-04, these two new standing desks are motorized and designed to get you up off your rump. While there's conflicting information out there, many believe it's generally better for your health to stand at your PC rather than sit in front of it for hours on end.

"It is true that people sit for most of their day, increasing the risk of diabetes and heart disease. With manifold health benefits discovered by prevailing studies these past few years, standing desks are a vogue choice for employers and office workers seeking to improve their habits and lifestyle. Many vaunt standing desks not only for health benefits, but even boosting productivity. With everything to gain and nothing to lose, why not start standing?," Lian Li proposes.

Unlike the DK-04, there's no built-in case or transparent glass surface to see your components—the DK-12 and DK-16 are motorized standing desks, nothing more, nothing less. Stand while you work, sit while you game. Both desks allow you to save up to four height settings ranging from 69.5cm to 118.5cm using a small control console on the front. The DK-12 can lift up to 120kg and measures 140cm long by 70-75cm wide, while the DK-16 can handle loads up to 80kg and is a little longer and wider at 210cm and 75-80cm, respectively. Both are 3cm thick.

There are a pair of circular cable passthroughs with metal covers on each desk to help route and manage wires. There's also a shelf where you can tuck cables or power bricks. Lian Li constructed its newest standing desks with a "leather-like" waterproof surface on a wooden frame mounted to an aluminum base. The steel legs are "exceptionally sturdy," Lian Li claims.

While less expensive than the DK-04, neither of Lian Li's newest standing desks are cheap. The DK-12 goes for $900 and the DK-16 sells for $1,100. Both are supposed to be available now at Newegg, though at the time of this writing, only the DK-12 is showing up.