Computer Desk Computer Build Log Day 1: Wood purchased and base cut out. Verified measurements from CAD and it all looks good. Cut out all the pieces and dry-fit them - still looking good. Front and side walls attached. The dream is starting to take shape!

Holes for IO cables, power supplies, reservoirs, and intake vent cut out. I decided to use a dual 5.25" drive bay reservoir on each side to give the front of the desk a great presence and to maintain the simplicity of the overall design. The reservoirs only have a 1mm lip around the front face so I took extreme care in cutting those holes, constantly test-fitting to make sure I was only taking off absolutely what was necessary.







Finally came the power supply holes, and I hit my first major error in this project...
You see, when I grabbed a random PSU CAD model a few years ago it was a Corsair SF600. Foolish me never thought to question if more than one size standard for PSUs existed, so the whole desk was designed around the PSUs sitting on their side and perfectly fitting in a roughly 122mm vertical space.

I pulled an old PSU out of a case so I could check my sizes with real equipment, because there's only one size right? 150 != 122. Woops. Fortunately I'm pretty sure I have enough space with them laying flat. I've checked with the acrylic mounting panels I made for the PC hardware but we'll see...

Also, I opted not to cut out the full space for 4x 120mm fans at the intake because I have concerns about a lack of structural integrity with that large a hole in the middle. It currently feels rock solid and can fit 2x 120mm fans with a few inches open for just bare filtered intakes.

I sanded the external parts smooth and then rounded all the edges with a router, attached the monitor platform and supports, cut out the monitor stand screw notch, and glued on all the trim to hide the LED strips.







With all the large tool work done, the desk finally came home with me today (I live in an apartment so I keep all my large tools at a friend's house who has a garage). I still need to sand off the top after the glue cures and then glue on the white trim board that goes on the back for the glass to butt up against (currently just sitting in place in the photo above).

After that I need to place and mark off all the hardware positions so I can cut out the holes for the radiator exhausts. Then it's on to priming! I'm using a high-build primer that I'll sand down so everything will be silky smooth before real painting begins.

Bits and pieces over the past week. The top-back plate was glued down. I laid out all the parts and marked their positions on the wood to finalize everything. After that I drilled the exhaust holes for the radiators (they drained my only functioning battery twice in that process!).











Through extremely careful measurement I drilled the holes for the fill ports that will attach directly to the reservoirs while being recessed into the top surface enough that they'll be flush and not impact the glass on top. Drilling these was a huge pain and I mangled them a bit, but it shouldn't be noticeable once painted and the parts are in.



I designed the faceplate for the front I/O and cut it out with a laser cutter, then sanded it nice and smooth. After getting the positioning just right I drilled out the necessary hole for the I/O cable to pass through while being hidden by the plate.



Next is spraying high-build primer and sanding!

I hate painting.

More than that, I hate sanding.

The last two weeks were spent sanding, priming, sanding smooth, priming again, sanding super smooth, spraying gloss black, realizing I hated the look of the gloss black, brush painting matte black, and then spraying on several layers of gloss clear coat.

These photos are from different stages of that process.

With the painting finished I laid down the carbon fiber wrap. I made two major mistakes here.

First: I required of myself that the wrap all be one piece with no seams because I'm dumb and didn't realize that with the parts in there you wouldn't be able to see the corners anyway. This was a nightmare to get right, but I managed it well enough (and nearly lost my mind in the process).

Second: I should have primed the inside of the desk more thoroughly to give the wrap something better to stick to. Multiple places failed adhesion over the following days which required me to carefully peel it back and use spray adhesive to attach it so it'll never come off again.





With the wrap down, I could finally put in the reservoirs with the fill ports and mount the radiators and attached drain valves! The Radiators are not actually attached to the desk, but that's fine because the fit is so tight on each one that they aren't going anywhere. Also, each radiator has a fill port coming off the top that goes through the trim, which also holds it in place! I'm super happy with how the reservoirs look and the custom I/O faceplate came out fantastic.



On to mounting the radiators and drain valves (which connect to the radiators via a chain of fittings). You can see in the photo that the body of the drain valve has a bigger diameter than the rest of the fittings, so I used this as an additional means of securing this assembly in place. Below the drain valve is an extension fitting exactly the thickness of the wood on the desk, and a hole drilled to be exactly the size of that fitting. The extension fitting with drain valve assembly above it goes in and between the valve body being much larger than the hole and the tightness of the fit on the extension fitting, it's all held very securely in place. With the bottom of that extension fitting being flush with the bottom of the desk, I just put a small thumb-screw cap on each one to provide a failsafe if the drain valves ever fail or I somehow forget to close them.





Next came the acrylic plates. My plan for technical longevity of this desk is to use acrylic plates to mount parts to with mounting points scattered throughout the desk for the acrylic plates. This way cables can go under the plates, and in the future if mounting points change (like for a new GPU) then all I need to do is make a new acrylic plate without having to drill into the desk or anything like that. I had previously gotten the measurements I needed to fit each GPU on a plate and each ATX motherboard on a plate, as well as designing a plate system for mounting drives. With these plates cut out and the radiators & drain valves securely in place, I laid out the plates to mark where all their mounting points to the desk should be (as well as get a visual for how the hardware will look in the case).

Now that the points were marked, I drilled holes about 1cm in depth and added threaded inserts to each one, then made sure all the plates still fit using the actual mounting hardware. It's a little hard to see, but the GPU plates don't actually have any holes in them for the card to mount to because there is no standard (like ATX for the motherboard plates) so I need to actually pull the cards out of my rig to do that, which will require shutting down and disassembling a good portion of my computer that I use every day. SO, I'll just figure out those mounting points when it comes time to actually mount the cards. What could go wrong?









Next is adding the computers!

It's finally time.

Gaming desktop and media server have been disassembled, their parts summarily attached to their respective mounting plates. The GPUs required a little creativity but they're secure and the plate system is working.

With all the pieces finally assembled and in place, I was finally ready to build the water cooling loop. This was my first time doing a custom loop, but I've done months of research and felt fairly comfortable with it. I was hoping to get both sides of the desk completely parallel, but the lack of a water block for my secondary GPU and the output ports on the reservoirs only being on one side means they'll be similar, but not perfectly mirrored.

Loop assembled, I was ready for the leak test. Filled and ran (through a test twitch) both loops for about 24 hours with zero signs of leakage. There are still three critical elements of the desk left unfinished!





First: the hole in the back for cables needs a filter of some kind to hinder dust from passing through. (Spoilers: I ended up solving this by using a pair of "hairy" door sweep things and attaching them opposite each other on the top and bottom of the slot so cables would pass through the mesh of "hairs" without leaving much of an opening)

Second: the small flap at the back to conceal cables attaching to the motherboards and GPUs still needs to be attached (I was waiting until all the parts were fully in before doing this)

Third: The bling! The UV/RGB LED strips! The plan is for a mirrored pair of them that meet in the middle of the back portion of the desk and extend down each side, one set to green and the other set to blue (to match the Riing radiator fans).

Even without the strips it's still beautiful.

One final leak test running off the actual power buttons (which I'd just put in because they took forever to arrive) and it's ready for action.



Hinged flap was installed inside at the back to cover up the cables connected to the GPUs and motherboards, LED strips mounted and hooked up, and finally a ton of cable management in the rear bay (under the monitor plate and behind the back wall).

You may have been wondering to yourself: "boy, I haven't seen a single mention of legs on this desk build. How is it going to hold itself up?" This was actually the final problem that I couldn't solve before committing to building the desk. That is, until suddenly everyone was working from home and the existence of products to improve your home office became much more prominent. One such product was a motorized desk leg system to replace your existing legs with ones that will lift your desk surface between sitting and standing. That's right, this beast of a rig is a sit/stand desk!

The final piece of the build was simply laying the custom cut sheet of tempered glass on top so that it butts up against the monitor plate at the back.

It is done, and it is so fine.


Next up: glamour shots

Witness the power of this fully armed and operational battlestation!


Flyby view of the internals (sorry for the uneven movement). Custom I/O plate on the right side with Monsoon Series Two Dual 5.25" bay reservoirs on the front. My parts are nothing to write home about, but it still look freaking cool.


Multi-purpose server half of the desk. Does it need water cooling? No. Does it look awesome? Yes.


Gaming computer side of the desk. Eventually I'll get a new primary GPU and the 1070ti will become my secondary, which I'll add to the server loop for symmetry.


You can see the acrylic plate mounting system I designed here. Each computer part is mounted to an acrylic plate with holes drilled specifically to fit it (not a big deal for ATX motherboards but the GPUs required some creative attachment points). Those plates are then mounted to the desk itself with 1/2" standoffs. This way when I upgrade parts in the future or form factors change I'll be able to adapt by just making new acrylic plates and won't have to drill into the desk again.


The whole inside of the desk has a white carbon fiber wrap that looks really cool in person but washes out extremely easily on camera. The hinged flap on the right side of this image is for covering the cables coming in from the filtered rear port. Accessing the motherboard or GPU ports is as simple as flipping up the flap. After I lift off the giant glass sheet of course :V


The flow meters are really cool, and also function as T junctions for draining the loop. This branches off to a ball valve which has an extender on the opposite side exactly the right size to go through a hole in the desk and end up flush with the bottom. It's rock solid and the port on the bottom is almost completely invisible.


Having both systems be as symmetrical as possible was a big focus of my design, which was hard when they're both so extremely different.


Acrylic plate mounting system I designed for the HDDs and SSD. I can easily store another SSD mount on here or remove the SSD and add another HDD. The opposite side of the desk has the same system, but only one SSD on it since I have two M.2 NVMe drives on the motherboard.


You can see the fill port for the server's reservoir here. Getting this right required *perfect* measurement since I wanted it flush with the top surface and the parts involved meant a fixed distance to the reservoir below.


The faces of the reservoirs stick out only about 1-2mm from the body, so there was zero wiggle-room for error. This was by far the most stressful part of the build.


It looks scratched but those are micro-bubbles. Even after a couple weeks and a couple times topping off the fluid, the bubbles still persist.
Note I have since learned that I didn't need to have my pump speed anywhere near that fast.


That's right, it can also be a standing desk at the push of a button! Also, you can see my custom front I/O port here. I made the face plate with Fusion 360 for the tool path, photoshop for the greyscale gradient, and a laser cutter to make the part.


There are Cablemod's Hybrid RGB/UV LED strips along the back and sides with two controllers so each half of the desk can be colored independently. To enhance the blue/green theme the lights are set accordingly.

You can also see the filtered intake here. With the six high static pressure fans on the radiators I don't really need intake fans here, but they certainly don't hurt. I just need to get one more for the right side. This filter is attached magnetically so it's super easy to pull off and clean.
There are appropriately-colored lit power buttons for each system to the sides of the intake, which isn't super visible but I think is a nice touch.

With the glass on, we are armed and ready!


Same lighting system, but the room lights are off and the UV lights are on!

Thank you for reading this! Building this desk has been a dream of mine for several years, and I'm so glad I finally got to make it a reality. Are there things I wish I would have done differently? Of course, but I learned a lot and had a good time building it, and now I have a rig unlike anyone else's.