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I want to build a triple-monitor PC soon.

But first, I need a computer desk to hold the monster.

Or rather, a computer table, because it would be nice if the table/desk could sit in the middle of a room and double as a board game surface during board gaming sessions (possibly augmented by pushing a second identical or similar table up against the first). I think with the right triple-monitor mounts, I could swing the monitors aside and use nearly the entire flat surface for board gaming without the computer getting in the way.

Ideas? What do you experts think? What brands are good?

thanks

Anthro.

Wow, nice. But, expensive.

Anthro desks are indeed cool!

Here's another resource: http://www.multi-monitors.com/SUPER_PC_ ... s/5105.htm

I'm also looking at Ikea's Galant line of tables. Which I would need to add some kind of triple-monitor mount onto.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categ ... ces/18960/

Anthro desks are indeed awesome - I used one to build, now that I think about it - a triple monitor desk for a Digital Radiography workstation. I just used three arms for the three monitors and they mounted solidly on the desk surface, but there isn't any reason it couldn't have been an old door or some plywood on sawhorses to achieve the same effect.

I guess the question is do you want three monitors tied together a la this: http://www.ergotron.com/Products/tabid/ ... fault.aspx or this: http://www.ergotron.com/Products/tabid/ ... fault.aspx.

Otherwise you could just get three independent arms that you could mount along the back edge of an appropriately robust table/desk. Something like this: http://www.ergotron.com/Products/tabid/ ... fault.aspx or this: http://www.ergotron.com/Products/tabid/ ... fault.aspx

thegleek wrote:

Here's another resource: http://www.multi-monitors.com/SUPER_PC_ ... s/5105.htm

Just Wow.
Edit: ROFL, "1-inch plywood" $2095 and this desk isn't even made from any exotic materials.

Get a good slab of solid wood (or in my case, sexy laquered birch laminate. That's solid 1.5" birch cuts, laminated together, not plywood with a laminate top) and buy the ikea screw on legs. It will be a fine workstation desk for decades to come.
A decent timber merchant will probably be able to cut it to a custom shape/size and possibly even finish the edges for you for a small fee. Solid wood gains character the more dings and dents it picks up, solid wood is for real men. Only girls and children accept plywood and fibreboard.

Or, you could throw over $2000 away on a similar slab of thinner, cheapo-plywood with a nasty laminate surface that will look awful if you bash the edges at any point.

Chrispy_ wrote:

thegleek wrote:

Here's another resource: http://www.multi-monitors.com/SUPER_PC_ ... s/5105.htm

Just Wow.
Edit: ROFL, "1-inch plywood" $2095 and this desk isn't even made from any exotic materials.

Get a good slab of solid wood (or in my case, sexy laquered birch laminate. That's solid 1.5" birch cuts, laminated together, not plywood with a laminate top) and buy the ikea screw on legs. It will be a fine workstation desk for decades to come.
A decent timber merchant will probably be able to cut it to a custom shape/size and possibly even finish the edges for you for a small fee. Solid wood gains character the more dings and dents it picks up, solid wood is for real men. Only girls and children accept plywood and fibreboard.

Or, you could throw over $2000 away on a similar slab of thinner, cheapo-plywood with a nasty laminate surface that will look awful if you bash the edges at any point.

I'm not in the market for $2k desks, either, but that's a reasonable price for office-grade furniture in the fit, finish, and dimensions described, especially since the price includes shipping (which can otherwise get quite ridiculous on large furniture packages). Also, if you don't live in a part of the US that has local timber processing industry, tracking down some of the options you propose can be quite tricky, especially now that Lowe's and Home Depot have nearly destroyed the local lumber yard business model, leaving behind only a few bulk suppliers known primarily to contractors -- something I learned the hard way when trying to track down a supplier of wood veneer a couple years ago. Also, the finishing methods you propose require suitable ventilated workspace and a fair bit of time, patience, and experience if you want to get a smooth surface over an area that broad.

In short, don't mock other people for making different choices based on different priorities. A slab of MDF or thick plywood with a high quality laminate surface and a rubberized edge can make for a very durable desk and is adequate for most peoples' needs.

ludi wrote:

A slab of MDF or thick plywood with a high quality laminate surface and a rubberized edge can make for a very durable desk and is adequate for most peoples' needs.

So very true - but it shoud not cost over $2000.

The finishing I am talking about would require a bit of ventilated workspace, but even if you were to buy new powertools for the job, then dispose of them, you'd still have a lot of spare change from $2000.

Maybe it's a geography problem but in the UK that sort of furniture is commonplace for around £200 and you can get significantly nicer stuff for similar money if you do a little hunting. Hell, for £300 here you can get a solid oak 6-seater dining table...

ludi wrote:

Chrispy_ wrote:

thegleek wrote:

Here's another resource: http://www.multi-monitors.com/SUPER_PC_ ... s/5105.htm

Just Wow.
Edit: ROFL, "1-inch plywood" $2095 and this desk isn't even made from any exotic materials.

Get a good slab of solid wood (or in my case, sexy laquered birch laminate. That's solid 1.5" birch cuts, laminated together, not plywood with a laminate top) and buy the ikea screw on legs. It will be a fine workstation desk for decades to come.
A decent timber merchant will probably be able to cut it to a custom shape/size and possibly even finish the edges for you for a small fee. Solid wood gains character the more dings and dents it picks up, solid wood is for real men. Only girls and children accept plywood and fibreboard.

Or, you could throw over $2000 away on a similar slab of thinner, cheapo-plywood with a nasty laminate surface that will look awful if you bash the edges at any point.

I'm not in the market for $2k desks, either, but that's a reasonable price for office-grade furniture in the fit, finish, and dimensions described, especially since the price includes shipping (which can otherwise get quite ridiculous on large furniture packages). Also, if you don't live in a part of the US that has local timber processing industry, tracking down some of the options you propose can be quite tricky, especially now that Lowe's and Home Depot have nearly destroyed the local lumber yard business model, leaving behind only a few bulk suppliers known primarily to contractors -- something I learned the hard way when trying to track down a supplier of wood veneer a couple years ago. Also, the finishing methods you propose require suitable ventilated workspace and a fair bit of time, patience, and experience if you want to get a smooth surface over an area that broad.

In short, don't mock other people for making different choices based on different priorities. A slab of MDF or thick plywood with a high quality laminate surface and a rubberized edge can make for a very durable desk and is adequate for most peoples' needs.

There is NO way materials and labor are anywhere near 2k. There are some serious profit margins being made here.

Hmm maybe I am in the wrong line of work...

Chrispy_ wrote:

The finishing I am talking about would require a bit of ventilated workspace, but even if you were to buy new powertools for the job, then dispose of them, you'd still have a lot of spare change from $2000.

Maybe it's a geography problem but in the UK that sort of furniture is commonplace for around £200 and you can get significantly nicer stuff for similar money if you do a little hunting. Hell, for £300 here you can get a solid oak 6-seater dining table...

Office furniture is definitely a profitable industry, but again, that $2k price included cross-country shipping for a double-laminated desk assembly that is just shy of eight feet long, and presumably made of plywood just so anybody of normal stature has a fighting chance of lifting the shipping box. Since you're in Western Europe, bear in mind that "cross country" looks like this: the distance from New York City to Los Angeles is roughly the same as the distance from Lisbon to Moscow.

The table in your link would cost about USD $500 at current conversion rates and appears to be made from relatively low-grade oak offcuts, compression glued back together into a butcher-block style slab. As it happens, my folks saved up for years to be able to afford a high-quality, continuous-surface oak diningroom set nearly twice as large as that, and the price was well north of what that there is selling for.

I'm an occasional woodworker myself, and the grandson of a (now-retired) custom cabinetmaker who did all of his business by word-of-mouth, so I do have a deep appreciation for good craftsmanship over commercial mass production. However, it takes time and experience to get a consistently good finish, especially over a broad flat area like a desk surface, and I have an appreciation for that, too. Anyone who takes up the hobby for a one-off application of this scale, especially without an experienced craftsman to offer some guidance, is probably going to be disappointed with the results.

Ludi, there is indeed great value to well made, high-quality furniture. Good craftsmanship over commercial mass production is worth paying for when there's nothing mass-produced that suits your needs, but I don't know why you're defending this $2095 mass-produced slab of plywood.. Solid oak offcuts is still much better than plywood in my book, but that was just my example of how solid oak doesn't need to command a massive price premium.

Realistically, the commodity laminate desks that are used in almost every office in the UK are so cheap as to make even that oak dining table look expensive. £70 for a five-foot desk with decent, robust steel legs.
And even if shipping was as much as $400, that's 1695 for a desk that in my opinion is worth only a tenth of that.

For 2 grand I'll go outside, and butcher the damned tree myself...

Better yet. I can go into a hardwood furniture store and buy a huge desk made of solid Southern Oak for 2 grand. Screw that plywood and pressboard junk.

Follow-up Status Report

I went with the Ikea Galant series desks mentioned above.

No triple-monitor configs (I changed my mind), but actually I ended up converting a whole game room for my family. I connected two black Galant tables end-to-end in a room that formerly held a pool table. Ikea sold me a cheap kit to connect the two tables firmly and I went with 3 T-legs.

We are all gamers, so I also installed 4 (count 'em, four) Ikea keyboard trays and 4 Ikea CPU holders. I also installed 4 of Ikea's cable managers down the middle of the underside. Ikea's smaller wire managers -- not the bigger sheet metal managers which I found out the hard way were too big to be compatible with the dual keyboard trays on both sides.

I drilled cable management holes in the tabletop using Ikea's cheap ($8, I think?) attachment for your own power drill.

Added a mini-fridge and a microwave nearby and voila. Now we can all game in the same room which is a huge improvement over the prior situation where each kid was in their own bedroom and I was in the home office.

I was a little worried at first about fitting two monitors back-to-back on the tabletop, but I measured carefully before buying and, sure enough, it turned out great. We have flatscreens, though, so I don't recommend anyone try that with CRTs of any kind -- 2 CRT's will not fit back-to-back on the Galant tables.

I'm very satisfied with the Ikea solution. Easy to build with clear instructions. Sturdy even loaded with four computers and with teenagers in the room being teenagers. No worries about someone bumping the table and knocking your drink over, it does not move.

Sounds good, nice work.
(A picture speaks a thousand words)