My Programming Desk Setup (As a Computer Science Student)

Key Takeaways

hello everybody and welcome back so in this video i'm going to be showcasing my pc slash programming setup now chances are if it's not your first time on this channel that you've seen this setup before in fact you can see it behind me right now you can see the rgb in the pc you can see the monitor and all of that stuff but i've never done a video where i've actually gone through and showed you exactly what i've used talked about why and potentially made some recommendations if you guys are looking to upgrade your setup so with that said i'll quickly mention that i have an absolutely ridiculously overkill setup here you do not need anything even remotely close to what i have to start programming so please don't feel discouraged if you don't have this stuff don't feel like you need to get any of it this is just me showing you what i use and well i'll tell you if i would recommend some specific items or why i've actually purchased them so let's go ahead and get started and i will talk to you about my pc programming setup so i'll start by just giving you a general overview of this setup kind of showing you what it looks like and talking to you a bit about what i actually use this setup for so first of all the space that i'm located in which is pretty important is in the basement of my parents house now i have a really large room the room that i'm in actually used to be a theater room i have a projector up there and there's like a big flat screen kind of projector screen on the other side we actually renovated and modified this room specifically for me so i was really fortunate that my dad's actually quite handy he built like a big massive door and then there's this big massive l desk that we built specifically for this room so that kind of starts the setup off but what i use this space for is the following so i am a programmer i am a student and i am also a content creator so a lot of the equipment that i have here especially a lot of the expensive equipment is actually primarily used for content creation right so my lights my camera my microphones all of that kind of stuff and then i just kind of tie that together with my programming setup quote-unquote so i have my monitors my keyboard my mouse my computer my lights all that kind of stuff which is specific really for the programming aspect so i'll try to distinguish between those things in this video but just keep that in mind that a lot of the equipment that i have here is simply because i am a content creator and will i need that kind of stuff to be able to make videos that look like this so the order in which i discuss these items has no significant importance so you don't need to read into that but the first items that i'm going to talk about here are my monitors now i will start by saying that i highly recommend anyone that's programming has at least two monitors or one very large screen like an ultra wide monitor i cannot stress how much of a difference this makes being able to have your code on one screen and then have stack overflow or spotify or whatever else it is on the other screen is super important and well i honestly don't know what i would do without a dual monitor setup now that said what i have here is actually kind of a combination of both the things i recommended so what i have here is a 27 inch q monitor with an 144hz refresh rate and a 2k resolution and this here is the lg 34 inch ultra wide monitor now i need to tell you about this monitor because this thing is amazing it's actually game changing and honestly i think i could suffice by just using the lg monitor because it's massive and well for programming it's so nice to be able to have three separate windows vertically on one display now lg was actually kind enough to sponsor this video and send me over this monitor for free so like i said it is a 34 inch ultra wide monitor that has a 1340 by 1440p resolution this gives it a 21x9 aspect ratio and makes the same height as my 27 inch monitor this monitor is pretty much designed for programmers and comes with some great software that allows you to split the screen into multiple unique layouts it is game changing to be able to view multiple sized windows side by side and especially great for using an ide or navigating large code files it has definitely increased my productivity and if you want to get an idea of what it can do for you then head over to lg's ultrawide festival website where you can customize your own ultra wide monitor by customizing your own monitor you'll be entered for a chance to win one or get a 50 amazon gift card now lg also has a sense of humor which you can find in their campaign video which is a pretty funny skit of a developer not being able to find his error because while his screen was not large enough so anyways another big thank you to lg you can check them in this monitor out from the link in the description and now let's get into the rest of my programming setup so now i'm going to talk about my computers now notice that is plural i do actually have multiple machines that i use some for development some not so much for development but i will go through them so the first computer i have is my laptop this is a 16-inch macbook pro i got this last year this is the i guess 2019 version i don't actually know if they have a newer version and it's the base model it is a six core i7 16 gigabytes of ram and i used to use this for programming when i was in school i actually do like uh programming on macs and this is a great computer because the 16 inch display is really nice and i actually don't mind the keyboard at all so really a great computer i definitely recommend it if you have the budget for it but recently since i've been back at home this computer really all it's been doing is actually just running my audio so i have logic pro on it and that records all the audio for my videos and apply some filters and all of that kind of stuff now i do have this setup with a docking station so if i want i can turn this whole monitor and pc setup into like the mac setup so i can run off of this computer and i have a keyboard mouse switch which means i just press a button and my keyboard and mouse will switch between the mac and the windows computer so obviously that leads me to my windows machine which is my big powerful workstation which i use like 90 percent of the time i really just like working on desktop computers that's just my preference and this thing you'll understand why i want to work on it it is a ryzen 9 3900x processor that's a 12 core processor in there i have an rtx titan or a titan rtx whatever you call it nvidia actually sent that to me i was not crazy enough to buy that graphics card don't worry and it has 64 gigabytes of ram and then there's two m.2 two terabyte ssds one of them is booting into windows and then i have another ssd so a third ssd that's one terabyte that runs my dual boot into ubuntu so usually i do my programming on windows some people might cringe at that but when i'm making videos and stuff a lot of times like most of you guys are using windows so i try to mirror that by having my main computer being on windows but sometimes if i'm doing some more specific things i will boot into the ubuntu os and honestly i don't have a crazy preference over the operating systems i know how to use them all and i'll just you know use which ones i would need to for specific tasks now i do have a third computer this is more of just a server build so this is i won't talk about it too much but it's like a 10 terabyte server just sitting kind of in the corner of my room and that's what i use for storing all of my video files all of my audio files editing files and just all that kind of stuff that i don't want clogging up my main machine so those are my main computers you can now probably imagine why i prefer to use the desktop machine and now let's move on and now moving on to the keyboard so obviously your keyboard is going to be one of the most important items in a programming setup and well i can give you my recommendations for which ones i like but this really comes down to preference everyone prefers different types of switches different amounts of travel and well you're just gonna have to kind of research and mess around with some different keyboards until you figure out which one you like now personally i've used many different keyboards over the years right now i actually have about six keyboards in this room and my favorite types of switches i do really prefer mechanical keyboards are cherry mx brown and cherry mx blue now the cherry mx brown is something that has a little bit of a less audible click to it i believe it is a lighter amount of pressure that you need to apply to it and then the cherry mx blue has more pressure and it's that nice like kind of clicky sound the keyboard that i'm actually using right now is the das keyboard 4c tkl now i really do like this keyboard it is different than some of the other ones that i've used there's no rgb on it and it also is a shorter size keyboard so it doesn't have that numb pad on the end and honestly i never use the numpad i actually can't think of a situation where i've ever had to use the numpad so that's nice to have it a little bit shorter but it's not one of those keyboards that's like all mushed together and has the arrow keys mixed in with all the other keys because i really do like to have the arrow keys kind of separated from the other part of the keyboard so that when i'm navigating a code file it's really easy to move around this one also has two usb ports on the side it's cherry mx brown switches and it has a soft tactile typing experience so that's what i've been using for right now would highly recommend and in fact das keyboard was actually nice enough to send over two of these keyboards one that i'm using and one that i can give away to you guys so if you want to be entered to win a das keyboard for ctkl i will handle the shipping i will send it to you wherever you are in the world then go ahead and join my discord server there will be a link for that in the description and there'll be a channel somewhere in there that says giveaway you just have to follow some basic instructions you will be entered and then whoever wins well i will send you the key so now i'll move on to the mouse the mouse that i'm using right now is actually the logitech mx master i think that's the exact model of it i am going to link all this stuff in the description so you can check there if i made a mistake but this mouse is amazing this has a ton of different buttons it has this really cool button like where my thumb is it has the forward button the backwards button it has a vertical scroll as well as a horizontal scroll and the coolest thing about this mouse is the scroll wheel so it has a setting so there's this little button where i can toggle the speed of the scroll wheel and i can make it do infinite scrolling and what that means is i can like flick the scroll wheel and it will never stop it will just keep well it will but it will take a really long time to stop it'll just keep spinning super fast and this is amazing for programming because if i'm in a really large file and i want to quickly get down to the bottom of it all i have to do is just flick the mouse scroll wheel and it will automatically realize that i'm trying to scroll really fast and just boom start going all the way down to the bottom of the file seriously a game changer this is an expensive mouse but it feels great in my hand i'm not sponsored by them or anything like that but i just highly recommend it and seriously like one of the cheaper items in my setup that makes a massive difference for my efficiency when i'm navigating and working through different codes so now i'll quickly discuss my chair so obviously you can see the chair that i'm sitting in right now i really like the chairs that have a super high back i like something that i can lean all the way back in this has a tilt as well as a recline feature which is really nice obviously i can adjust the armrests i can move them to the side i can move them up and down it has the lumbar support cushion it has the neck cushion and this is just a great chair it's also on wheels which is really nice now i wouldn't necessarily recommend this chair just because this is kind of you know like a gaming like racing chair kind of thing and i had got it just because people had recommended that i buy something like this but looking back i probably would have rather get something that's more of an ergonomic chair i think this one is pretty comfortable but from what i've seen it's not the best for your back now i'm young enough that that's probably fine but i am considering getting a nicer chair that has like kind of a more curvature and like ergonomic structure to it so i won't necessarily recommend this chair i'll just say that this is what i'm currently using and it's fine it's a high quality chair but there definitely is some better options out there so now i'll talk about some of the more random and kind of quirky things in my setup and why i have those so first of all i have a really nice mat on the ground that i always put my feet on this is actually a bath mat funny enough but it's just super comfortable i've used it for a long time and it's just great i just love having something that's kind of like warm and fuzzy on the ground when i'm programming just makes it much nicer to be there i also have a little fan that i have on my desk i mean it's kind of a given why i would have that i have a speaker this is a beats pill that's just what i use for my audio i also have air pods i use those just so i'm on like a conference call or if i'm you know like in some kind of google meet or zoom call or something like that of course i have my microphone this is a really high-end microphone this is a rode nt1 it actually is an xlr input microphone and what that means is i need a usb audio interface to be able to get this to work so without getting into too much detail that little red box you see there is a scarlet 4i4 i believe that's what it's called and that's what i use to actually take my audio from the xlr input and get it into a usb signal so that i can put it into my computer now what i'm actually doing is i'm running all my audio into my mac and then my mac is outputting the audio back to the scarlet so it's filtering it and having the output go through that and then from the scarlet i have an output jack and that output jack is running into my main computer so in theory i could stream my one audio source to both of my computers at the exact same time i could also stream it to other output sources if i wanted to because this specific device has four outputs on the back of it so that's it for the audio interface i also happen to have a ups underneath my desk that is an uninterruptible power supply that's really important because if i'm working on a file if i'm filming a video if i'm doing something like that obviously i don't want a power surge making me lose all of my progress so i have my server and i have all my of my other important hardware devices plugged into that ups and the next two things i'm going to mention are actually the most underrated items in my setup i absolutely love them i will not make a pc programming setup without having these items in it the first is my fidget toys so i have two fidget spinners and i have this like fidget flip thing i have no idea what it's actually called but it's like a square and it like kind of rolls around on the table but i just love having something to fidget with i always find myself reaching for like a pen or a fidget spinner or that little cube thing whatever i'm programming or i'm trying to think about something pretty deeply next i also have e-reading lamps so these are really cool these lamps are specifically designed to be put over top of your monitor so they're anti-glare and they really are just designed to make it easier to view your screen now i won't go into too much detail on this but like i think the science behind it is like you need adequate lighting when you're looking at a computer screen and they just hang right over top of the screen kind of illuminate the desk area which is really nice if i'm like writing notes or something and they just make it kind of easier on your eyes to stare at the screen for a long period of time these lights also have a brightness and temperature adjustment so really cool and just super underrated i would highly recommend them they make an absolutely massive difference finally you can see i have a usb hub sitting on my desk that's just because i ran out of usb ports on my computer and then my mac is sitting on top of this like little fan thing so i don't even really know what to call it i guess it's like a laptop stand and it has fans underneath it that just blow cool air onto my macbook pro so that way the macbook pro fan itself doesn't rev up and be really loud especially when i'm recording videos like this so definitely a super cool purchase that was like 40 bucks and that means that my macbook pro fan just like never spins up and i have a quieter fan underneath it that is handling its actual cooling so with that the last thing i will say is i also have an ipad pro now i just got this and this is honestly like such a cool device i have the apple pencil with it and just for taking notes or doing any kind of like drawings or math or anything like that super awesome i don't think i'm ever really gonna have to use paper again and well that kind of concludes my setup tour of course i have all my studio equipment and lights and stuff i mean that's not really part of the pc programming setup so i'm not gonna go into that in depth but yeah that is what i have that is what i use and i would love to hear your thoughts on it all in the comments down below so that being said if you guys enjoyed make sure you leave a like subscribe to the channel and of course i will see you again in another youtube video [Music]