5 cool things I screwed to the bottom of my PC desk

As someone who works from home, talks about computers professionally, and plays a lot of computer games, I spend a lot of time at my desk. I’ve spent literally years improving it and making it more comfortable and efficient. In this week’s Boost Mode, I’ll show you five easy and cheap tools I screwed to the bottom for this purpose.

First of all, I use a standing desk — partly for my bad back, partly because the shape naturally lends itself to this sort of customization. With a typical standing desk frame you’ve got almost as much space underneath the desk as you do on top, and it’s a great thing to use. I use a four-legged Uplift frame, because three monitors, a beefy desktop PC, and a bunch of other stuff weigh a LOT, but there’s still plenty of space around the edges for other tools.

An easy power strip

If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly charging up gadgets in addition to your phone. Just within reach right now, I’ve got my wireless keyboard and mouse, headset, controller, laptop, tablet, and mobile headphones. And that’s not counting other things that I recharge on a pretty regular basis at my desk to do my job, like review units, various camera equipment. You get it: I’m charging a lot of stuff. And even if I wasn’t, there’s no such thing as too many outlets.

Michael Crider/Foundry

That’s why this thing lives right to the side of my desk’s control cluster. It has four standard U.S. power outlets, one of which is offset for oddly-spaced chargers, two USB-A ports that don’t even need a wall wart, and a USB-C port with 20 watts. Newer versions have up to 45 watts, supporting faster charging on some phones and tablets.

Unlike some of the other designs, it doesn’t need to clamp to the opposite side — it comes with a screw-in bracket that keeps everything nice and tidy. That makes it perfect for quickly charging pretty much anything. Just make sure it’s plugged into an outlet that isn’t the primary one for your PC’s surge protector or UPS, and you’re golden.

Extra USB ports

Speaking of plugging things in: I use an under-desk mount for my actual PC, something that they used to call a “CPU holder.” And while that’s wonderful for making sure that my cables don’t get tangled when the desk goes up and down, it makes accessing the top-mounted USB ports on the case pretty difficult. The solution is a handy little USB-C hub. This gives me a pass-through USB-C port, two extra USB-A ports, and SD and MicroSD card slots (which I use a lot for camera stuff). There’s also an HDMI port and Ethernet, which I don’t really need.

Michael Crider/Foundry

The precise model I use isn’t available anymore, but frankly they’re all pretty interchangeable. Find one with the ports you need facing in the same direction, and just use it as a means of re-orienting your PC’s front panel, if necessary. Mine is too small to screw in, since it’s designed as a lightweight mobile gadget. But I’ve found that a little double-sided Gorilla Tape has kept it firmly in place for years, across hundreds and hundreds of plug-ins.

A holder for my headset and controller

A game controller and PC headset are both things that you want within arm’s reach, but don’t need access to all the time. So it’s a waste of space to have dedicated holders on top of your desk, don’t ya think? That’s valuable real estate for lunch dishes toy spaceships Chibi Godzlla important things that I definitely need for work.

Brainwavz

So I got this thing. It’s a little 3D-printed doohickey that holds both my headset and my controller. That’s it, dead simple. Originally it came with some 3M sticky stuff, but over time that gave out under the sheer titanic thickness of the Xbox Elite 2 controller. So I drilled some holes in it and screwed it into place, and it’s been happy to behave ever sinse. For just $17, this is probably the most use I’ve gotten out of any of these gadgets dollar-for-dollar.

Cable routing trays

A lot of desks now come with a little tray at the back, a perfect place to stick a surge protector or those annoying power bricks for monitors that don’t use a regular three-prong cord. If your desk doesn’t have them — or if the manufacturer of your desk just charges too much for the add-on — you can get them yourself very easily.

Baskiss

This isn’t complicated, it’s just really useful, especially if you’ve got tons of stuff to plug in. Run the power cable from your primary surge protector to the wall with a little bit of slack, and suddenly your cable management for a standing desk becomes incredibly easy.

A screw-in drawer

The biggest downside to the standing desk layout is that it doesn’t have a bunch of storage for everything that isn’t a computer. Luckily you can add some on with no trouble. This little plastic sucker doesn’t hold much — it’s only 7.8 inches (19.8 centimeters) on its longest side. But it’s perfect for all those little loose things that I can never find in a bigger drawer, like USB adapters or SIM card pins.

Yuntop

And there’s nothing stopping you from installing more than one. A wider, more standard desk drawer doesn’t really work with a big steel frame, but it should be fine for less heavy-duty desks.

There ya go, a bunch of extra stuff I add on to my computer desk to make my life easier. I hope it helps at least some of you.

Cool stuff from around the web

• GTAVI will run at 30 FPS at launch, even on those “Pro” and X” consoles: There’s a lot of news on GTAVI out there, but it’ll be years before it shows up on the PC. At least when it does, at least some of us will be able to play the inevitable blockbuster game at 60 frames per second…which is more than you can say for the Xbox or PlayStation.
• 8BitDo support comes to Linux (via the web): 8BitDo makes some of my favorite gaming accessories, especially on the budget side. In a possible nod to the growing popularity of SteamOS and Linux in general, the company now has a web-based programming tool for its controllers and other gear.
• Your next CPU cooler might be thermal powered: A team of researchers have developed a solid-state hardware cooling system that can remove heat from processors…and is powered by the same heat it’s removing. This is very early days, but cooling systems that draw no extra electricity could be a huge advancement.

Reddit user Euphoric-Bluebird806

• Asus power supply repair may have created a PC bomb: One Redditor claims that the PSU they returned to Asus for repair came back and tripped the electrical breaker. The poster says they cracked it open (immediately voiding the warranty) and found a vital safety fuse had been removed and replaced with a single soldered wire. Um, don’t do that, whether you’re a “pro” engineer or a regular user.
• MSI brings back DDR4 in “gaming” laptops: The newest version of the MSI Katana laptop will reportedly be packed with DDR4 memory to save costs. 12 years after DDR4 debuted. But it’s worth it so you can make AI slop of a pregnant strawberry, right?

Game pick of the week: TerraTech Legion

Mythwright

I love building stuff in video games…unless it’s a house or a town. Preston Garvey, please just let me shoot some mutants already, I don’t want to play post-apocalypse Sim City. But let me craft weapons or armor or a car, and I’m all yours. TerraTech Legion lets you craft a car that has both weapons and armor, and you get to go shoot stuff with it right away.

Drop on an alien planet. Start with a super-basic future Hot Wheel and a pea shooter. Survive for a minute or two, and you get more parts to add on to your car. The grid-based building system lets you get both creative and tactical, and the roguelike setup and four different bases keep things interesting. At the end of every run (if you survive that long) you’re rolling around in a machine of pew-pew death that would put a WWII battleship to shame.

This is a spinoff of TerraTech, a full 3D vehicular game, but the top-down style and limited 10-to-30-minute sessions work a lot better for me. It’s just $10 on Steam, and also available on Xbox and Epic.

That’s all for this week. To get my editorials, news picks, and game recommendations delivered straight to your inbox, you can sign up for Boost Mode on the PCWorld Newsletter hub. Also check out The Full Nerd, Prompt Mode for “AI” tips, Safe Mode to keep your PC and gadgets secure, and Smart Mode to boost your productivity.