Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How to Build an Epic Gaming Setup – Build Guide”.
So you want to build a badass gaming setup or maybe really like the way Peter setup came out from season 10 and you want to copy it bar for bar or do something similar well in this article I’ll be going over the entire setup process. From start to finish in the effort to help you build your very own dream setup, let’s begin now, obviously, if you’re building any type of setup, you’re going to need a PC to power everything and if you’re building a new system you’re going to need a Windows. Cd key, but don’t pay full price for one, because you can get one super cheap at your CD key.com. They have all types of keys, including Windows, 10 pro and Windows; 11. Pro keys that go for around $ 22, but you’re going to have to use my code ts20 to get that extra discount. After checking out, they will email you on how to retrieve the key, and all you got to do is copy that and paste it in the activation settings in Windows and you’re good to go to start off. It’S always recommended to draw out your setup whether it’s on a piece of paper or 3D modeling. This will help you get your vision, transferred into something for easy reference and planning step. One measure your room get all the measurements of the wall side to side top to bottom, how thick the baseboards are and where the outlets are located. Everything and anything that exist in your room next step is to find the center point. I can’t stress how important this is, if you want to keep everything balanced.
Finding the center of the wall will make sure that your setup is symmetrical just measure the whole wall side to side and then divide by two to find the middle. Then you can mark it and set up a vertical laser if you have one, this will make it so much easier to find the center of the wall from top to bottom, by the way I’ll leave links to everything I talked about and used for this setup Down below for easy reference anyways after marking the center point, it was time to Mark the holes for the PC. The PC case, I’m using is from Etsy and it’s an open air frame that can be mounted on the wall and mounting. It is extremely easy in the back. There are three holes that sit on three screws. Now you can measure the distance like a normal human and Mark holes on the wall, but if you’re bad at measuring like me, I can show you a much easier way by using painters. Tape go ahead and cover all the holes of the case, then simply mark it or poke a hole into all of them. Peel the tape off and stick it on the wall using a level making sure it’s nice and parallel with the floor afterwards, you can proceed to drill in the screws, leaving the tape on there to prevent splinters and major cracks. In my case, I added one more screw a little lower for extra support, but it’s not needed because of the four extra supports that I install later in the video which I’ll show you. Ideally, you want to always hook up a heavy object like a PC case, for instance, on at least one stud on the wall for added support, but unfortunately that isn’t possible most of the time because of how the studs are spaced out in most homes in America. The studs are spaced out by 16, in this makes it harder to mount things that have fixed holes like the case in this article, for instance, the holes are already in fixed locations and, as you can see here, none of them line up with the stud I Mean sure you can move the case until one of the holes lines up with the stud, but then the case won’t be centered with the wall, which is not what I wanted.
So, in your case, if you’re able to mount it on a stud directly, then this is how you do it correctly. You can use a stud finder to find the studs on your wall and mark them. Then, using the smallest drill bit, I can find I drilled pilot holes to confirm where the stud actually was only one of the marks was the stud which I ended up.
Circling as you guys can see in the video so after finding just one stud finding. The second one is really easy, because all you have to do is measure 16 in in either direction to find the next one, because that is how they are spaced out. Each stud is 1.5 in wide, so the next one would be 16 in from the center point.
As you can see here, the next stud is right on the money exactly 16 in to the right. So that’s how you find the studs. If you want to drill into them, anyways back to the video I drilled through the painters, tape and left about a/4 in sticking out so that I can hang the PC like, you would normally do with a painting using one hand on the bottom to make sure The PC doesn’t fall down, I wiggle the case until it fell in place.
Then I used a level to make sure that it’s perfectly balanced and it’s parallel to the floor and not the ceiling, because some homes have slanted ceiling. You always want to make sure whatever you’re hanging is parallel to the floor. Then I added four of these tiny little L brackets underneath the case for added support. I slid two on each side and marked the bottom of it with a pencil. Then I remove the case, drill the holes and put the case back on the wall, just like that.
The PC was securely fastened to the wall and the only way it was going to fall down was if the Kool-Aid Man himself bursted through the wall. Next, it was time to install the slat panels. I got these from the wood veneer Hub and they come in a bunch of different colors, but I went the black since that was the theme of the setup.
If you guys have always wanted to add slat panels to your project, you can get them now. For 5 % off using my link below I’m not sure how long the discount code will last, but it’s currently active at the time of making this video you will need a cutting tool if you decide to modify the panels. Luckily, they do come in two different sizes: 94, 1/2 in tall or 47 in tall, so it depends on how tall your ceiling is and how tall you want the panels to go. In my case, the walls were slightly shorter than the panels, so so I had to cut some of them off.
I decided to cut the panels to 84 in leaving me a few inches underneath to pass through any necessary cables. I marked off where I want to cut the panels using a straight object or, in my case a multi-angled ruler, and I used it to guide me. While I cut through the panels, I recommend using small black screws to hook these up to the wall because they blend in easily with the felt material.
I use two on the top two in the middle and two near the bottom anyways. Once I finished all the panels on the wall, it was time to move on to the RGB strips I’m using four goie neon strips, and thankfully they are the perfect width to fit nice and snug between the wood panels. These are also cutable, which is awesome. If you want to get the perfect length, there are dotted lines on one side of the strip indicating the cutof off point, keep in mind the shortest length you can cut. These are in 84, in which happens to be the length of our slat panels. So that worked out perfectly afterwards, I plugged each one of them in to make sure that they still work after the cut, and then I proceeded to insert them into the panels one by one. They are a tight fit, so I had to apply pressure equally to slide them in from top to bottom bottom.
After that it was finally time to set up the desk. I’M using the up spell cerat top from Ikea and four custom welded legs. I made sure they were all equal distance from each other before screwing them in using some lag screws. Then it was time to plug the gear into the PC, so I took it off the wall and peeled off the painters tape because I didn’t need that anymore.
It’S recommended to plug all the cables in while the PC is off the wall, because it’s a lot easier to reach the US B ports. I also tested the Monitor and the PC one more time to make sure everything was working. Fine, then, once all the cables were plugged in, I added a 16 ft RGB strip behind the case to give it a nice glow. Whatever you do, don’t leave the PC by itself while doing this.
Otherwise bad things can happen. Luckily, nothing broke from the fall other than a little bit of my confidence, but once everything was hooked up, it was time to remount the PC on the wall, while making sure all the cables fall down from the small slit near the bottom to cover the cables Hanging down from the PC, I used a very wide race wave, which happens to be almost the perfect width between the panels. I just had to trim the corners a little bit for it to fit nice and snug, but these are made out of PVC.
So it’s very easy to cut and modify using a box knife just cut your desired size and stick it against the wall with the pre-installed adhesive strip. I also cut a smaller piece for the top. It doesn’t really serve a functional purpose other than to cover the empty space and to blend in with the bottom Raceway, to hook up the monitor to the desk, I’m using a different type of monitor mount.
This one has a Groove near the bottom, which is specifically designed to go around, monitor risers. Also, I love how far back this keeps the monitor, providing a nice distance from you and the display it’s high adjustable and you can even rotate it if you like, the Riser, I’m using is from bolo and it slides perfectly in the groove of the monitor mount. It’S also the nicest monitor rizer I have used. It has a beautiful wood finish and offers a ton of add-on accessories, but for the setup I decided to stick with a headphone hanger, which I installed on the left side and an Elgato stream deck Mount, which I installed on the right side.
If you look underneath the Riser, you can see a ton of different installation points, so you can pick one that best fits your need. Then you can add your own mouse pad here, or you can pick one up from tour shop.com, because you’re guaranteed to find one that fits your setup, Steam and you’re getting a high quality pad. It’S got a great speed and control surface with the best stitching in the game. Add your keyboard, your mouse and any other accessories or Decor. You want to spice up your desk and continue hooking your other gear like the microphone and boom arm.
If you have one the one I’m using in the video is from Mayo, it’s basically like the Elgato mic arm, but much cheaper. I also attached a Mayo mic with a green XLR cable for a bit of contrast. I have both the mic and the headphones plugged into a mano mixer, which allows me to control all of my audio sources, and it’s got a bunch of other cool features tooo now, since the PC is up top, it’s very difficult to reach the back of the Motherboard to plug things in so I installed a USB 100 from corser underneath the desk.
This is a 7 Port USB hub that has a nice mix of USB 3 and type-c ports. I attached this underneath the desk using 3M tape, specifically VHB, which stands for very high bond. This has way more adhesive power than standard 3M, but surprisingly, a lot of 3M vhp on Amazon are fake, but believe it or not. So it’s important to make sure to read the reviews before you buy it or you can pick up the one. I recommend in this article which I’ll drop a link to it below so I cut a single strip. I attached it behind the USB hub, then I removed the rubber feet to avoid interference, and afterwards I slapped it underneath the desk.
So now, if I want to plug in a USB drive or connect something to my PC, I can use the USB hub. Instead, if you saw a setup makeover episode, then you probably saw how Peter was able to turn on the PC by pressing a button underneath the desk. Well, that’s because I installed a PC remote switch that connects directly to the PC’s jfp1 header.
This way, instead of reaching over the desk to power, the PC on you, can just tap on the key. Instead, This is perfect for PCs that are far away from reach, and especially wallmounted PCS, of course, decided to add the notorious pencil drawer as well for those everyday essentials, but because it comes in the color white, only I didn’t want it to collide with the black Color scheme, so I tucked it away on the left side of the desk behind the legs, so it stays hidden when not used. The drawer is actually pretty big.
It can store quite a few things in here, like the remotes for the corner lights, which we’ll talk about later and the all-in-one cleaner. This thing is a must for every setup. You basically pull it out of the case spray on any surface that has smudges or fingerprints and wipe it off, because it has a microfiber cloth exterior it’s not alcohol based either, so it won’t damage any screens. I highly recommend keeping one on hand, especially if you use a tablet or smartphone. I also added some really cool Corner lights from Apec. They are perfect for setting the mood or adding a bit of ambient lighting.
You can control the lights using a provider remotes or use an app from your smartphone and on the other wall. I added some budget Nano Leaf lines. These two can be controlled with a smart phone and voice assistant like Amazon, Alexa and Google Voice, and they are half the cost of the Nano Leaf lines. Okay, now, for the fun part, the cable management – I installed two racks underneath which will help keep everything off the ground, but I went with these specifically because they are large enough to hold bulky power strips and adapters.
The power strip I used is the one from Belin, because this one has outlets that pivot, which means that I can use up all the plugs without them interfering with each other. After that, I use these cable Clips to keep all the wires from hanging down and also to have a clean path straight towards the back of the desk. I use these clips for the remote PC switch the USB hub and the exess XLR cable. Now there were a lot of extra plugs from all the LED strips and the corner lights combined. They were total of six plugs and I didn’t want to Route them back up the wall and into the rack underneath the desk, because it would have looked more messy. So instead I got a large cable box and I dumped everything in side and finally, I use these super thin, cable raceways to help clean up the cables from the corner lights. I mean it’s not completely hidden because the control panels got in the way, but it’s a major improvement from before considering how much gear this setup has I’m quite happy with the Caroll management and I’m very happy with the overall setup. If you guys want to check out Peter’s reaction to this setup that I built him check the video which I’ll link below thanks for watching and I’ll, see you guys in the next one .