My Setup of my Systems :)

[kim]

Hi there,

well, let me say this first, i'm not dual-boxing like you guys.
I'm posting my setup and configuration here, because i think maybe you will get some tips/hints from my hardware arrangements.

I hope I'm not posting this into the wrong part of the forum.

Let me intoduce me first:

I'm a 27 year old student at a university in Germany and i'm studying information & technology science. So as a student i have a limited budget per month.

I'm working in my freetime on several pc's at the same time.

My pc hardware consists of 3 workstations and 2 server.
On all 3 workstations i'm using dual-screen solutions for more desktop space, so i'm working on 6 monitors at the same time.
I got 4x 22" tft's and 2 old 17" crt's (like i said i'm a student with limited budget), so the 2 old 17" crt's will be changed in a few weeks to tft's as well.

The problem was to arrange those 6 monitors in a cheep and usefull way, without moving my body to much. ^^

1.
http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee298/kimsays0/17102007.jpg

That was the first arrangement i've done. I know the image quality is poor, i did it with my cellphone-cam.

Well it was nice, but it didn't really satisfied me, so i was looking for a better solution to arrange them in a 2x 3 matrix row.

So the next step was to find a good desk-stand for my 4 (6) tft's. I found a couple of company's who sold those solutions like Ergotron as it was mentioned in a few posts before, but all those solutions was to expensive for my limited budget. For example Ergotron Quad-Desk-Stand costs here in Germany round about 310-350 euro with a shipping time of 4-6 weeks, but thats only for 4 tft's, so that i have to bought another one for the other too. All together it would have costs me ~600 euro's. That was way to much for me as a student ;). Wallmounts also are no use for me because the wall behind my desk is made of fire protection materials. A weight of >1kg(!!!!) will fall down after attaching, also re-positioning with other screen size are limited with wallmounts. Deskmounts are variable and the best solution for re-positioning

Well i thought there must be a more cheeper and similar solution and i found one.

I draw a small and simple design on a paper for 3 deskstands, each deskstands will hold 2 monitors.I went to an engine builder and showed him my drawings and said to him that it should hold a complete weight of round about 15kg (each monitor has a weight of ~5-6kg). He said no problem easy task. When i'm asking him of the price for all 3 deskstands he said to me 120 euro! Well that was great, because it was less than 1/4 of that what i would have payed for those ready build deskstands from Ergotron or other companys.

2.
After one and a half week they were ready and i picked them up.
Thats the result of my simple idea:
http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee298/kimsays0/PIC00360_2.jpg
http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee298/kimsays0/PIC00362_2.jpg
http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee298/kimsays0/PIC00363.jpg

As you can see on the pictures it is a simple steel work solution, but it is rock-solid. I can move every attachment up and down.

The foot is a 250x250mm steelplate. The attatched bar is 900mm long with a wide of 20x20mm. The monitor plates got a size of 150x150mm and the holes are normed by "Vesa100". That means the distance between each hole are 100x100mm.

3. Attaching the monitors:
http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee298/kimsays0/PIC00364_2.jpg
http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee298/kimsays0/PIC00365_2.jpg

They fitting perfectly as you can see on the pictures but i got only a smal problem while attatching them to the deskstands.
The top 2 22" tft's got a thicker border at the bottom than the top border of the bottom 2 22" tft's. So i have to attach the bottom tft a bit more in the front than the top one. Well easy solution again i ended up to put a few steel spacer between monitor and backplane. It fits perfectly again :)

4. After installing all 4 tft's to the deskstands here's the finished solution:
http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee298/kimsays0/PIC00373_2.jpg
http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee298/kimsays0/PIC00376.jpg

Like i said the two old crt's on the left side will be replaced in a few weeks too (limited budger :D), that's where the third deskstand is used for.

The selfmade deskstands are really rocksolid i think they can hold screens up to 24-26". With a thicker steelbar and a bigger foot plate there should be no limit but it is much cheeper if you have limited budget like me.

The other thing i would like to mention is my desk. Well at first i was looking for a big and stable desk that uses most of my space between the wall and my cupboard. I visited several stores but none of them really satisfied me again. Some of them was not deep/wide enough or other's were to expensive. Stores for office equipment where mostly to expensive for me so i thought about a cheeper solution again.

As you can see on the pictures the solution i used are simple and easy. I'm using a "working-plate", bought at the hardware-store/Home Depot hardware store for 70 euro, attatched with simple aluminium foot's. Those plates are normaly used for the kitchen but they are solid and heavy. You can order them in any length with a max depth of 120cm. So no worries about not used up space in the corner of the room :D.

That's it for now. I hope i could give you same advices and ideas for arranging and building those kind of setup in an other way. Especially for those who have limited budget like me ;)

Kim

[Ellay]

Very informative! I am looking into getting some nice stands for my monitors. Maybe this my be the plan for me :)

[Erron]

I love your design for the stands. Simple and effective. Why doesn't somebody sell those!!

Heh, nice work. Now, why aren't you multiboxing?

[Shogun]

very nice, simple and effective :)

I've been playing with the idea of making my own out of wood, they'd be almost the same as those, but less flexible (for heights etc). But thinking about it I do know a guy who works with metal all the time and can probably get some of these made, great!

How sturdy are they? any movement? Also, do you think using spacers as you mentioned, you could set the top screen at a slight angle (with a longer bolt) I might have to look into modifying it slightly to allow for that :)

[kim]

Heh, nice work. Now, why aren't you multiboxing?

Well good question, i think the first reason is, that it will costs a lot of money per month for a game that i really like to play, but i did not love it that much. For me WOW is a good game that i like to play a few times per week.

The second reason is more a personal matter.
I allready played WOW since the beta but i only have 2 lvl 70 mainchars. The third char stucked at lvl63 since a few month because i'm bored of leveling and seeing the 5man instances again and again. In the last few month i'm only playing the big 25man instances, thats where i got the most fun in WOW recently (my raid is practicing at Illidan Council right now).

I've tried other mmorpgs as well like, Everquest or Guild Wars, but i don't like them. The graphic style is to realistic for me, i love the japanese comic style ;). I'm a big fan of Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger for example. Thats why the only mmorpg i like is WOW.


How sturdy are they? any movement? Also, do you think using spacers as you mentioned, you could set the top screen at a slight angle (with a longer bolt) I might have to look into modifying it slightly to allow for that

After attaching the monitors the deskstand is really sturdy, no movement at all after placing it on the table.


Also, do you think using spacers as you mentioned, you could set the top screen at a slight angle (with a longer bolt) I might have to look into modifying it slightly to allow for that

Yeah i thought about it too, and it is possible with a longer bolt, the hole's in the plate are a bit bigger (M5) than the hole's in the back of the monitor (M4). On the photo it looks a bit high, but sitting in front of the "wall" it feels different. The top 2 tft's are in a good sight, so i don't need to set them into a slight angle.

[Wilbon]

Nice post kim. This is something I have been looking at doing for the past couple of weeks. I have a few sketches done up that I will be taking to a friend who does some metal work. I have 4 22" tft's that I will have setup like you. I do like the slider that allows you to adjust for height, I may incorporate that into my setup. Thanks!

The only part I am still working on is I would like the ability to have the top 2 monitors tilt down to my viewing angle a little bit. My friend says that he can tilt the metal bars down to whatever angle I want, but I am still trying to figure out a way that would allow me more freedom to adjust them. Anyone have any suggestions?

[Shogun]

I think I'm going to incorporate these into a similar design:

http://www.b-tech-int.com/images/Dimension%20Photos/bt7511%20dimensions.jpg

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=250177947174&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=015

[Wilbon]

Thanks Shogun! I will play with my design a little bit and look into incorporating those mounts for my 2 top displays.

[Shogun]

NP, there are a huge variety of these kind of mount brackets, all different prices and varying functions, another one I saw was this one:

http://www.messiahmod.com/LOW_PROFILE_WALL_MOUNT.jpg

Similar price, but it has 30° of up/down swivel, left right swing and if I read correctly either this one or a similar one has full rotation (so you can make the screen vertical or horizontal, handy :)

[Shogun]

Well I got the price back on having some made... £70 each, too much IMO, but then the company is busy atm and doesn't need the work, and the guy I know who works there doesn't have time to produce them in his off-time (which would mean only paying materials, not time)

So, I've come up with an alternative, home-made version which should work... One of these for each monitor:

http://www.deltaav.co.uk/products/LM05_BIG.jpg

http://www.deltaav.co.uk/moreinfo.php?productId=12

Mounted on... upside down Ikea legs! Yup, just get cheap legs, drill through them, bolt the mounts to the legs and then bolt the legs to the desk!

http://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/57137_PE162758_S4.jpg

or

http://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/73024_PE189278_S4.jpg

I'll post pics and a review of the results some time next week, in a sepperate thread, thanks for the inspiration Kim! :)

[Herc130]

This cost me $80 US which surprised me because everything else I looked at till I checked ebay had these things costing $300+.....which I don't understand because it is just frigen metal tubing!!

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/7984/a5911mu1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Positions all four screens very well and stays in that position no problem. I bought it off ebay and you may be able to get the same thing overthere if you look around.

[kim]

@shogun:
Sticking a metal or aluminium bar to the desk is something i thought about myself too at first. And i came over a slightly problem with that solution. Let's say you arrenged 4 TFT's very well to 2 aluminium bars, but a half yeah later you are switching from 19" to 22", they won't fit anymore. You have to rearrange them on the desk, that would leave some ugly holes at the old place. Or what if you only want to change position on the side of the desk? It would be to unflexible without a movable arm attached to each monitor.

A workaround would be:
Stick the Ikea leg upside down on an extra 4-6mm thick woodplate (or better a metal plate) with nuts and bolds. The size of the plate must have a minimum size of 25x25cm. Put 4 small foot's unter the plate from a hi-fi system (you can buy them at every store where they selling hi-fi systems).
Same goes with the wood example, but before you use that one of that you've postet, get a normal 20x20mm woodbar from the store and attach it to a woodplate with bracket's.

This solution was my last option too, if the company would have rejected my order or if they would have been too expensive as well.

@Hec130:
I found that too, when i was looking for a solution, for 4 TFT's it was good, but not for 6. And after all it has the same problem as mentioned above. It is to unflexible in arrangement (on the desk) especially with 6 TFT's.


Well an other option is to combine both examples :)
What i mean is, using the 4 moveable arms (shown on Hec130 picture) on an extra metal bar, attached to a wood or metal plate.

[Shogun]

Yeah I'm considering the metal/wood plate idea to make it more flexible, it's less simple and sleek looking, but ulimately make life alot easier to move stuff around, and it's easy enough to do.

Going to try and get this done this weekend, time and kitchen install finished permitting -.-