- Are you tired of reaching
down to plug in a USB stick? Do you hate that mess of
cables under your desk? Are you sick of hard to
use phone charging cables? Meet the LTT clean desk V2. It's our meanest, cleanest desk setup yet, and it was completely scratch built for the ultimate in cable
management perfection. Thank you LG for sponsoring this video. And now why don't we
all take a closer look at what you guys paid us to build. (dramatic music) LG's Ultra Fine Ergo display features a 32 inch 4K IPS panel which is great for watching videos, getting work done or whatever you want. But it also isn't its
most interesting feature. The ergo in the name is because the included
adjustable monitor arm foregoes the traditional large base and instead uses a much
more compact desk clamp. The arm gives you the ability to move the display 180 millimeters, or seven inches away from the stand and swivel it 280 degrees in addition to your typical tilt,
rotate and height adjust. That made it the perfect candidate for a project that one ups
our last cleanness desk setup. In its pushed back position, the monitor has a distinct
asymmetrical look to it. And the goal was to complement that look, rather than build just
another basic rectangle desk. We ended up choosing
the single bump design to keep the integrated
USB hub out of the way of the chair to give artistic
users a larger work area and for aesthetics. For our material, we
chose Baltic birch plywood for its light color, strength
and great layering pattern. Did I mention this is a
scratch build by the way. Nicholas is gonna put all
the plans in the description if y'all wanna follow along. For dimensions, we settled
on the five foot width of our sheet to save a cut. And for depth, we felt 28 inches allowed both comfortable computing
thanks to the Ultra Finer Ergo. And with a quick transformation, ample space for hobbies like drawing, model building and the like. Now the main innovation of our table is it's invisible cable management. High Performance wireless
keyboards and mice have been staples of
clean setups for years. But the problem is that we
don't have the technology yet for wireless high speed USB or high resolution display connections. At least not with low latency. So we came up with the
idea of routing channels on the underside of the table
to tuck our cables into. And then we chose legs that
are both aesthetically pleasing and hollow. The idea here is that our desktop and the floor underneath
can be totally free of rat's nest cable mess. We laid out the potential cuts then set up the desk like
it was intended to be used. This actually ended up
helping us choose the hump as the home for our USB 3 hub. I mean no one likes bumping a
USB stick and breaking it off. We've all been there. As for our wireless charging chi spot, the left side keeps it out of the way and maximizes usable space on the right. Lefties may actually prefer
to mirror the entire design. Marking the final cut
lines, cable channels, and where our legs will attach was next. A quick tip by the way, mark an X on any areas to be cut. This will make it easier to remember which side of the line you wanna stay on and provides a quick reference
to what should be cut off. We then used a jigsaw to remove most but not all of the material. This was to make sure
that when we went back and cut with our handheld router, the cutting kind of router not the networking kind of router, we'd be able to get a
clean smooth surface. Using long rulers and some
of our filament spools as guides for our flesh trim router bit, we were able to clean up all of the edges of our table to its final shape. For those of you wondering
what a flesh trimmed it is, it's a router bit that has
a bearing at the bottom or the top that matches the
diameter of the cutting part. The bearing rides along
a template or guide that you wanna cut and the
bit then cuts that shape. Next, we drilled out
the holes for the legs, and instead of using a normal wood screw we went with these threaded wood inserts. They allow us to easily install and remove the legs
without having to worry about the screw holes wearing out and becoming unusable over time. Make sure you choose a
good quality insert though. We had a couple that didn't
want to install all the way in before breaking. And when they break, well, they are a royal
pain in the tush to remove. For cutting the cable channels, a combination of freehand routing and using a straight
edge as a guide was used to make multiple passes down
to the quarter inch depth that we needed. Then for the wireless charging pad. The hole was cut freehand to
just inside the marked circle with multiple very careful passes to get down to just one
and a half millimeters of material left. That's about the thickness
of a grain of rice. We then slowly clearance cut until the charge pad fit perfectly. To hold it in place we used
some scrap metal flat bar, cleaned it up and gave it a
slight bend in the middle. So that once screwed down, the bend and the flat bar
would push against the pad, holding it in place. To make the desk look thicc, that's what to seize Of course, but still have it be light
enough to move around. We added a one inch skirt to
the entire outside of the desk. Now to make the skirt, you could take the time
to make an exact copy of the tabletop that's one inch thick. Or you could go the faster route of using the scraps and off cuts from making the table in the first place. We cut down the scraps
to an inch and a bit, the exact size doesn't really matter. You just wanna make sure
there's enough material to give you a strong glue bond. You don't have to worry about overhang at this stage by the way, because that's gonna be taken care of with the flush trim bit. Do make sure however that
there is no undercut. Because it'll look like there's a chunk of wood missing from your desk. The skirt was then glued down then routed to match the skirt to the
tabletop, looks tiring. Good thing we have these
huge 40 ounce water bottles, lttstore.com. Now we chose a five and a
quarter inch bay USB hub that has five type A ports
and a Gen two USB type C port. Power for the hub is
handled via SATA connector, and data is handled by this 16 foot optical
USB 3.2 Gen two cable. Oh and then also this
male to male coupler, because the pictures on Amazon
for the hub weren't great. To fit the hub and not
have to cut a giant hole into the side of the desk, we had to strip the hub down to its PCB, and grab a drill bit that's about as tall as the components on the hub. We use the drill to remove
the majority of the wood, then a hammer and chisel to
open it up the rest of the way with frequent test fits
and clearance checks until the hub fit correctly. Then the faceplate that came with the hub was trimmed down and an inlay was cut so that it would be flush mounted. Some more cuts were made so the cables could clear the legs and fit into the channels. Next up was making the past
through holes in the leg for our cables. One in the top drilled
out with a step down bit, and then filed until it
was big and smooth enough to pass our cables through. Then for the bottom same procedure, just a lot wider to make
grabbing the cables easier. To smooth the table for final assembly. We started with 120 grit sandpaper to knock down all the
sharp edges on the table, and round the corners a bit. And then next was 220 grit. Then after a wipe down with a damp cloth, the table was sprayed
with it's first few coats of satin clear varnish. These coats need to dry for about 24 hours after which you'll notice the wood grain becomes more pronounced
or it tends to pop out a little bit more. This is called grain rise and it happens when the wood
swells a bit from the varnish. All you need to do to fix it is lightly sand the top
with 320 or 400 grit to it smooth again. And after that give it another
wipe down with a damp cloth to get rid of all the leftover dust. Spray another couple coats of varnish, let it dry overnight and come back to admire
your wood in the morning. Now that the table is done, all that remains is to see if
it functions as advertised. This is actually my first
time being close up with it. First order of business, I guess is to take advantage
of the main benefit of the approach we took here. So this is sick. The only area where there's
any cables visible on the desk. Okay, there's a small
wraparound at the back where the monitor arm comes down. Then it goes into our
built in cable channel. Then there's an umbilical
cord that comes out here along with the there you go, power brick for the monitor. And that's it. Those are heading off
next to your super sexy, clean looking PC. And the entire bottom of
the desk is unobstructed. So mission accomplished
as far as that goes. Obviously, using a hub
instead of dedicated runs for each of these USB ports means that you are limited to the maximum speed of the single tether
connection that goes back to the main computer. But given that the just for like front peripherals or whatever. Realistically, I don't think you're gonna wanna plug in too many high
speed devices at the same time. So this is a type C Steam library drive. I'm just gonna pop in there and I'll see if it works I guess. What a wonderful question. Yes, I can turn the brightness down. Sorry, we need to turn
it down to the camera. But for your eyes, you
might want it pretty bright. It does 350 nits peak brightness, and it is HDR 10 compatible. So if you have an HDR signal
coming into it, that will work. Is that better Brandon. Theoretically, this should
be fast enough for me to use as a game library here. So let's go ahead and add
another library in Steam. Monitor's got speakers, one moment please. Turn those off. They're loud. There we go. So we're running off there just fine. If we had a lot of high
speed stuff plugged in, it could be a problem. But if it's just like USB key and then something like
this for Steam library, I don't expect it to be an issue. Am I in a real match right now? That's fine I can win this. This isn't the fastest
panel that I've seen. LG advertises a five millisecond
greater response time. So it's not exactly like
the ultimate gaming monitor, but the colors look great. No come on. Why is this game so hard? This is cool though. Check this out. I'm like oh yeah, time
to go more immersive. Look at that. We actually did a video recently where we took a gigantic TV also from LG, and then surveyed our staff to see what viewing distance
they felt was optimal. And what we discovered was that depending on the type of content, people actually felt pretty differently about viewing distance. Got all of them adjustments. Oh, yeah. So if I'm like, you know what? This is how I wanna game right now. Oh, it's not gonna make me good at it. But it's definitely sweet. I could blame it on the keyboard and mouse but we all know that's
not what's happening here. We can just figure out more of the ways that I can appreciate how hard
I'm getting owned right now. So if you wanna have more of like a top down viewing experience, that's totally cool too. It's like, whatever is ergonomic for you. There's actually a ton of
range of movement here. Alternately, if you're doing
something else entirely, you can just like have a
movie on like over there. It's kind of out of the way. I like this, this is sweet. What do you think Brandon? Traditional monitor arms, lame. Yeah, pretty much. This looks so much better and
takes up no space on my desk. So I can be like, you know what? Screw this game, 'cause
I'm terrible at it. Put all this stuff away. And I'm gonna get off to
something else entirely here. Yeah, thanks for nothing Rocket League. Like obviously monitor
arms existed already, but this is just a less wasteful approach. Why bother buying a junking
arm that you're not gonna use, that's gonna have to sit on your desk and just go in a closet somewhere. When you could just have it
come with the right thing. Great, Love it. Sorry team. Hey, I blew up one of the bad guys though. Well, maybe were the bad guys. We're definitely bad. Man, I remember when 30
inch monitors were like, crazy, crazy expensive
and no one had them. Because it's like ah,
that's totally unnecessary. Now it's like, yeah, 30 inch, this is a good size. 30 inch 4K is not only big, it's also sharp enough that no matter what distance you are from it, it doesn't have any kind
of noticeable pixelation or screen door effect. let's fire up like a premiere project. Oh yeah, and of course you're
at the native resolution if you want to work with
like High Res video content. The Ergo also offers 95% coverage of the DCI P3 color space. So it's perfect for
something like photo editing or video editing as long
as you're not expecting to master HDR content. And of course, we could just watch movies. Oh, I'm gonna switch it
into a HDR mode actually. Oh wow, well The HDR in this
is definitely kicking in here, we just really did not do a great job of mastering this video. The term for that, according to the kids is big yikes. - Big if whyness. - What the monitors
working as we expected. In conclusion, I think we
achieved what we set out to do. Which is absolutely no visible cables from a user perspective
and nothing to interfere with your feet when you're
sitting at your desk. But I do think there are things that we could do to even
take this to another level. Maybe drilling out the
bottom of the Ergo stand so that the cables can go
right down into our table with the integrated
cable management channel. Or maybe integrating one of
Logitech Powerplay mouse pads like into the desk or something. So that you never have
to charge your mouse. But that's a project for another day. For now, if you guys enjoyed this video, check out the link down below to all of the materials
that we use to create it. And if you wanna watch
something else like this, get subscribed because we're gonna have the ultimate desk PC
version two coming as well. Where the actual PC is
integrated into the desk and it's not much thicker than this.
