I've done some programmer desk setup upgrades over the new year which I showed recently in my YouTube Short where I went over everything on/in my desk. I wanted to make a post to do a short explanation of the specifics of what I use along with some rationale as to why.

IKEA HEMNES Desk, Black-brown

I've had this desk for 3 years now and it's been extremely solid. It was a great size when I only had my original 27" monitor on it, but now as you will see from the list, it's become crowded.

La-Z-Boy Dawes Manager's Chair, Brown

When things moved to work-from-home back in March 2020, I wanted to find a chair that could be close to as comfortable as the Herman Miller one I had at work, but I didn't want to pay the price. So I went down to Staples and started siting, and to my surprise a chair from La-Z-Boy, the recliner people, was actually extremely comfy. So it was love at first sit and we've been happy ever since.

Corsair K100 RGB Optical-Mechanical Keyboard

This was one of the new things I got on sale during Boxing Day. It was still quite a pricey keyboard but I am hoping to have it for a long time to come. It's much quieter than my previous mechanical keyboard and it's extremely responsive. Also the RGB lighting is very bright and I keep it on the rainbow effect all the time.

Corsair DARK CORE RGB SE Performance

I got this mouse a few years ago when I got it's matching K63 Wireless keyboard and it has always been a great mouse. It's also extremely responsive like the keyboard and also is RGB and stays on rainbow mode all day.

Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros

I saw a video of this device and hoped so much that it could stay on all day if plugged in. And GOOD NEWS, it does! So once I figured this out I had to have it as my desk clock. The background goes from day to night based on the time and it has lots of little touches if you happen to notice them. And if I get bored I unplug it and play some classic NES style Mario.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9

I've always preferred to have a laptop for work and luckily my work was kind enough to provide me one. That is not always the case and my previous employer I had to fight to try and get a laptop and it never happened. I recently got a love seat in my office and I sit on that often now with my laptop.

Blue Yeti Microphone

After seeing this microphone in many YouTube videos and reading quite a few glowing reviews I decided it was the one for me to start my YouTube streaming. It has not disappointed and it's sounded/worked perfect. The Blue Compass which came with the Blue Yeticaster bundle I originally purchased has been good but not as flexible as I was hoping. I sometimes find it hard to position in a good place while also not being in the way of my face.

Logitech BRIO 4K Webcam

I wanted to have a nice quality webcam and I felt that meant 4K at the time I got this. But that being said I never stream or record at anything but 1080p as my GPU can't really keep up too well during streams. The camera is great at 1080p also and until I go to some kind of fancy SLR/mirror-less type of camera it's done what I've asked of it.

Elgato Key Light Air

These were another Boxing Day deal and ended up being cheaper than getting the original Elgato Key Light which has roughly the same light output. I wanted to try and up the visual quality of my videos and I think the lighting has indeed helped add some crispness and color. I end up keeping the brightness quite low (10-30%) as anything over 50% is crazy bright to be looking at.

LG 38WN95C-W 38" Ultrawide Monitor

Got this several years ago also from a Boxing Day deal. I am not a high fps gamer so the 75hz max refresh rate doesn't bother me. Other than that it's an amazing monitor and now that I've gone ultrawide, I can never go back. It's just so much extra space to do activities!

ASUS VG245H 24" Monitor

This was originally my only monitor and it's since been relegated to the right side monitor in portrait mode. I've always liked having side monitors with this view which I use for various communications such as looking at emails and instant messaging. I usually leave my main center ultrawide as the focus for my coding.

Dell P2720D 27" Monitor

This was the monitor that my work gave me to use for work from home. I have decided to use it as the left side monitor to counter balance the right one. This monitor is 3" bigger so unfortunately I lose a bit of symmetry, but oh well. Also this monitor only goes to 60hz which I personally find a little annoying on the eyes.

Custom PC

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
• RAM: 32GB CL16 DDR4
• SSD: WD Black 500GB SN850 NVMe
• GPU: AMD RX 580

As with all my custom made PC's, it's a bit of a Frankenstein's monster. I hope to upgrade the GPU one day but the prices continue to be nuts so I might wait another generation before I pull the trigger on something mid-tier. As for the CPU it's been super fast but if it wasn't for the stock shortage issues I would have got a 5000 series chip. The PCI-E 4.0 SSD has been blazing fast as well as the quicker timing RAM which I don't regret paying a tiny bit more for.

I also did a video of me building this custom PC last year if you want to check it out in more detail.

Also last year I did a more detailed video of some of these parts so if you are interested in a longer form video that is slightly outdated I will leave this here also.

Thanks so much for checking out my article about my Programmer Desk Setup for 2022! If you liked this article and want to get more of my content, please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I am often posting new videos about code, tech & life.