I'm not going to lie.
I spend too much time at my desk these days.
Honestly, it's usually a pig sty,
which is ironic because I can't work or produce content
effectively in a cluttered and messy space.
You may have seen one of my previous desk setup videos
using an M1 MacBook Air, and maybe you liked it,
but I decided this time around
it wasn't quite minimal enough,
so I set out to create a new desk space
where I could truly sit down
and have no other distractions in front of me.
I'll give you a full rundown of the process
and individual components shortly,
but here's a quick introduction.
The brains of the operation is an M1 Mac mini,
and I have it attached underneath the desk
with cable management.
This serves two purposes.
One, it gets the Mac of the desk.
And two, also just looks cool.
This is a really cool setup for people like me
that use both Windows and Mac OS,
but also want to free up space on the desk.
The desk is of course,
a sit-stand desk with a custom stained Ikea tabletop.
Peripherals are a Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad,
a light bar from BENQ, and that's it.
I told you it was a minimal setup.
Anyway, let's switch to talking head Liam for more details.
Now, the inspiration behind this desk setup
is I wanted something really minimal.
I also wanted a lot of room for books
or to have a laptop or an iPad on,
and also just change it up and customize it as I wanted.
Now, some might say that this particular desk setup
is too minimal because there's no wall art or fake plants
or anything like that,
but for me personally,
I don't enjoy having any of that stuff around
because it doesn't bring joy to me.
And it also doesn't serve a functional purpose.
So everything you see on this desk set up,
from the stand to the leather desk pad
does serve a function.
Now you might not want something quite as minimal as this,
and that's totally fine
because this leaves you a lot of room to work with.
You can instantly change things out
like the leather desk mat.
You can add some plants or even a laptop or an iPad
with a stand.
More about that later.
Quick note, none of these products were sponsored
or even sent to me for free.
I purchased them all with my own money,
but this video is sponsored by Parallels.
Parallels allows you to use Windows on your Mac
without Bootcamp, or having to restart your Mac.
It's great for using Windows only programs
or even a little bit of gaming.
Check out the link in the description for more.
So let's talk about the desk first of all.
Now, I've featured this desk in a couple of other videos
and I really do like it because it's such a large size.
I can have a laptop off to the side,
or I could even use it for studying
or building a computer or something like that.
And I have heaps of room,
and all this was possible because I made it myself.
So the sit-stand base is from some random website,
like five years ago when I first bought it,
but the top is actually from Ikea,
and I picked it out and also sanded it down
and custom stained it myself.
If you guys do want to see a video on that,
I am working on it now,
so that should be up very, very shortly.
Now it is a sit-stand desk and you guys know
how much of a fan I am of sit-stand desks.
It's just really good for your health overall.
And if you're sitting down for eight hours a day,
like I am, sometimes even more than that,
it's just really nice to be able to stand up
every 45 minutes or so,
but still be able to use the desk.
Now, underneath the desk is where all the magic happens.
So to make the desk super, super minimal,
I've actually put a power bar and I've strapped it
to the frame underneath the desk.
I've also got an Ikea cable tray there
that keeps all the cables and power plugs
in one nice, neat heap.
And this is really cool because it allows me
to just have one single cable going from the desk,
into the power point in the wall.
Now to mount the M1 Mac mini,
I'm using the Sabrent Mac mini Mount.
Now I've used this in a couple of videos so far,
including the Custom and one iMac video
I did a few weeks ago.
If you want to check that out,
I'll link it up in the top right-hand corner.
Now, I really do love this mount
because you can put it anywhere in any orientation.
I've got it in the front right corner of my desk,
'cause that's actually where the intake and exhaust fan is,
so I'm getting nice, cool air coming in and around the CPU.
And this also allows me easy access to the power button
and also the ports on the back.
So this is really cool because I can instantly plug
almost anything into my Mac mini.
It's right there, ready to go.
I have two USB-A and two USB-C ports,
and I'm using a HDMI cable to actually connect the Mac mini
to my monitor,
so that just frees up even more ports for me to use.
For example, I'm not using up a USB-C port
just for the monitor.
Now, obviously, if you don't have a Mac mini,
you can just use a MacBook in its place.
It won't be quite as minimal,
but it'll still get the job done.
One more thing I'll mention about the desk.
Contradictory to the minimal topic of this theme,
I do have a LED light strip on the back,
and to be honest, I barely use this,
but it is really nice to actually add
a little bit of backlight when I'm sitting
in front of the computer.
Just makes it seem a little bit cooler,
and lights up the room a little bit more.
Moving on to the monitor,
which is the feature of this particular setup,
I'm using the Dell P3421W.
It's a USB-C, 34-inch, ultra wide monitor.
And this is actually a QHD display,
so you get a few more pixels
than a normal HD or 1080p display, which is really good,
especially because the screen looks so nice on MAC OS
with the higher resolution.
Now, in all fairness, this monitor is overkill
for this setup because it's USB-C compatible,
which means you can plug your MacBook in
with a single cable for charging,
up to 65 Watts, and also output to a monitor
at the same time.
But I bought this particular monitor for my mum
and I have to give it to her in about two weeks,
so I thought it might as well use it for a video
and test it out.
By the way, there will be a review coming
on this monitor very soon on the channel, so stay tuned.
Now, this is my first ever curved monitor,
and I can safely say it really is a game changer,
and I'm probably not ever going to go back
to the traditional 16 by 9 monitors
that I've featured in previous setups,
but that's a topic for another video.
Now, I'm using an ergonomic monitor arm
for this particular setup.
This is great, because it allows you to instantly change
the height and also depth of the monitor
without any adjustment necessary.
This is just a random one off Amazon,
so I'll try and link it down below.
By the way, anything I mentioned in this video
will be linked down below.
Now having a monitor arm like this
is actually super clutch for standing desks,
because I find that when I actually raise the desk up
to standing height,
the monitor is a little bit below my line of sight,
so I can instantly just push it up a few inches
and I'm good to go.
The other pro of a monitor arm is never underestimate
just how much desk real estate it's going to free up for you.
So, moving on to peripherals.
I have the Magic Keyboard and also the Magic Trackpad.
Now, to be honest,
I'm not a huge fan of the new Magic Keyboard
compared to the previous generation version.
I find the new one to feel a lot cheaper
and just depressing the keys
just doesn't feel as nice as the previous generation,
but I am going to use it for a couple of weeks
just to see how I like it over time.
But the big pro to having this most recent Magic Keyboard
is touch ID.
So yes, touch ID will work with the M1 Mac mini
and it works just as well as it does on the M1 iMac.
So I just press the button in the top right-hand corner
to wake the screen.
It's also going to unlock the computer.
And then when I'm done using the computer,
I just press that same button again.
It locks it, and I can just walk away.
Now, you can obviously swap out any of the peripherals
I'm using for a Logitech MX Keys keyboard,
or a Keychron K6, for example, or even a different mouse.
There's really unlimited options.
And I've also added a leather desk mat
to protect against scratches or spills,
but this isn't 100% necessary.
Regardless, I'll link this one that I'm using down below.
Now, moving on to the other product
that I'm never ever going to go back from.
It is the BENQ light bar.
So this again allows you to free up a heap of real estate
on your desk because it reduces the need for a lamp
to sit on your desk and take up valuable space.
It's also awesome for reading and writing,
as I've featured in other previous student desk setup videos
because the light is actually coming from in front of you
and not from the side or on top.
So it reduces the shadows from your own fingers or hand
while you're writing.
Light bars truly are a game changer
for students who are reading or writing at their desks
or anyone really who's doing sketching,
or maybe journaling at night.
Now you don't have to get a super expensive one from BENQ,
although I really cannot fault it.
It's a great product.
You can get cheaper ones from companies like Baseus,
but just bear in mind,
you won't get quite the functionality
and the quality as you do with the BENQ one.
So just to talk about some of the really awesome things
that I like about this particular setup.
So like I mentioned before briefly
at the start of the video,
it allows me to add and subtract things super, super easy.
So it truly is a blank canvas.
If you wanted to copy this for your own desk setup,
you could add wall art.
You can add different desk mats,
you can add a stand, anything like that.
For example, sometimes I'll have an iPhone or an iPad
on a stand next to me,
or sometimes I'll use the laptop stand
I mentioned previously to actually store a book on
while I'm writing notes.
And just having so much space on the desk
just allows me to think clearly and be really creative,
which is kind of what I need to make YouTube videos.
So one other weird pro is that it's actually super,
super easy to clean.
So if you guys are familiar with my channel,
you would have seen the creative cat
and she loves to sleep on desks and rub up
against computer electronics,
and this particular desk is no exception.
Her fur gets everywhere.
There's also a lot of dust in this room.
So having almost nothing on the table,
or at least things
that I can just take off the table easily if I need to
makes it so easy to keep clean.
So the end goal for this desk setup
is to somehow integrate
my pretty beefy editing PC rig into it.
It's going to be a bit difficult because my PC rig
is pretty big.
It's got an RTX 3080, and a 3900x CPU,
so you can't really cram that into the chassis
of a Mac mini, for example.
So I'm going to have to figure out a way to either have it
on the desk or underneath the desk,
but still keep it quite minimal and clutter-free.
Anyway, that's it for this video, guys.
Hopefully you enjoyed it.
If you have any comments or questions or suggestions
for future videos, leave them down below.
But apart from that, I'll catch you in the next one.