And lastly, I had an opportunity to partner up with Carl Friedrik to help show their incredible new home office lineup. More on that in a minute. I always knew my workstation was kind of clunky, but having to take it all down, move it and then set everything back up made it pretty clear that I want to do some things different to make working from home more comfortable.
As a lot of you guys already know that running this website and my YouTube channel is my full-time job. So, I work from home every single day. There’s not a day that goes by that I’m not doing ‘something’ that relates to my work. Now, just so we’re clear, all those YouTubers out there that you might see making videos showing off their fancy houses and brand new sports cars. I’m not that guy. In fact, I’m pretty much the opposite of that. However, with that said, I absolutely love what I do. And I’m incredibly grateful that I’m even able to do this and squeak out a living making videos for you.
Alright, let’s get into my workstation setup. First is the super sexy Ikea desk. I’m kidding. It’s not sexy at all but it works right now. It’s supposed to be a corner desk with another surface, but it’s all I have. The goal in the future is to have a powered sit-stand desk with a solid wood surface. So. if you’ve got the hookup with a quality manufacturer, let me know about it.
Leather desk mat and valet tray.
The next thing is the beautiful, vegetable-tanned Vachetta leather desk mat and Valet Tray from today’s sponsor, Carl Friedrik. Having been using the desk mat for the last 8-9 days has been an absolute treat. Before this, I was using a cheap rubber mouse pad from Amazon, and nothing underneath my keyboard. It would slide around a lot as I was typing and I was always grabbing it and sliding it back where I wanted it. It’s just one of those little annoying things that always kind of bothered me but I never really knew it until it stopped. This desk mat is absolutely stunning and it feels amazing.
Not only does it feel amazing, but because it looks so good, it makes me want to organize everything else on my desk a lot better. It also adds a level of class and professionalism that once I sit down, I know it’s time to get to work. Even though my desk isn’t ideal, having this beautiful, hand-crafted leather desk mat and valet tray makes me feel a lot better about it. There’s something about the feeling too because let’s face it, you’re touching your desk surface constantly. Whether it’s resting your wrists on your desk below your keyboard or gliding your mouse around, the feeling you get from this over a standard solid surface is just night and day.
They come in two colors, Chocolate like I have and a lighter Cognac color. They also make mouse pads if you want something smaller. Go check them out at this special link. Carl Friedrik is also giving us a discount code that’s good for one month; 40overfashion15
If you’re looking to class up your own work station, it’s definitely worth clicking the link and checking it out because.. you can also get it monogramed.
External Hard Drives.
Next, let’s talk about hard drives. I had a nice 8-bay, large storage array from G-Tech on my old computer, but when we built this new one a few months ago, we couldn’t get it to work for some reason. I was able to go through it and delete some old data get all the important data I needed and spread it across my other drives until I find another solution. Currently my blog content and videos live on two 4TB G-Tech USB-3 drives that I really like, with copies and other miscellaneous projects spread across these two other drives. It’s not an ideal storage solution and I do need something better at some point, but it’ll do for right now. I’m not sure if you guys are interested in any of the techy stuff, but if so, I’ll leave a few links down below.
My monitor is a 24” Dell Ultrasharp that I’ve had for a few years, but I have my eye on some new 34” curved monitors, but I can’t get myself to pull the trigger just yet. Maybe in a few months. The 49” curved monitors look insane, but they also come with an insane price. Ideally, once I get a new monitor, I’d like to have it mounted to a monitor arm instead of sitting on my desk.
My custom PC build.
My computer is a recent build that my friend Brian helped me with a few months ago. It’s not super top of the line, but I’m also not really a gamer so I don’t need super top of the line hardware. This was a budget build at around $1000 using the best I could afford at the time. It’s running Windows 10 and my main focus was on speed of editing videos.
I needed this to handle 100% playback in Premier Pro, timeline scrubbing without lag, real time color grades and faster rendering and output. This machine does exactly that. I film everything for YouTube in 1080p and then up-res to 4K when I output. I’ve seen comparisons between 1080 and 4K and I really don’t see the need, personally, to film everything in 4K. Editing is faster, storage is less and since most people are watching my videos on their phone, filming and editing 4K footage and dealing with those files just isn’t necessary in my opinion.
Okay, let me quickly run through some of the components because I know some of you might want to know. The case is a NZXT H510 mid-tower with a glass side window. The motherboard is a MSI MPG X570 Gaming Edge with WIFI and it has a ton of USB connections, which I need. The processor is a AMD Ryzen 7, 7200 with a neat looking LED cooling fan. The graphics card is a Radeon RX 590 FatBoy 8 Gig, and the power supply is a 650Watt from EVGA. It has 32 gigs of ram from Corsair, a Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 internal hard drive, with another Samsung 500 Gig Solid State working drive. I usually work on videos directly from that drive, then transfer everything over to storage after it’s finished. I can edit efficiently directly off the G-Tech USB-3 drive, but this seems a little bit quicker.
My peripherals.
Additionally, I have an older Logitech 1080p webcam for my Zoom calls and YouTube Live’s, along with a Blue Yeti USB microphone. I’d like the ability to use a DSLR for live streaming, but the Cam Link I want has been out of stock for quite a while, and even if you can find it, it’s crazy overpriced. So if you know of an alternative to the Elgato HDMI to USB Cam Link, let me know in the comments.
My other peripherals aren’t anything really special. I’m using a Logitech Bluetooth solar keyboard that’s been really great for me over the last few years. I also have a really cheap sound bar and a really cheap Bluetooth mouse from Insignia. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the computer build because it’s way faster and way quieter than the 8 year-old Windows 7 machine I was using before. Editing videos is way faster and everything just runs smoother.
Gentlemen, don’t forget to click the link below to Cark Friedrik and check out their new home office accessories. Also, if you’re not yet a subscriber to my YouTube channel, please consider it because I’m here twice a week with new videos that surround men’s lifestyle for grownups. Guys, I’ll see you in a few days for a brand new video, but until then, live well, stay healthy and I’ll see you soon.
Other items in this article/video:
G-Tech 4TB External Drive – https://amzn.to/3cagEad
WD 8TB External Drive – https://amzn.to/2SFKnQq
Dell Monitor – https://amzn.to/3bb8Vag
Sound Bar – https://amzn.to/35DpCKs
Blue Yeti USB Microphone – https://amzn.to/3dnUfWU
Samsung 1TB Internal M.2 Drive – https://amzn.to/2xF5vPw
Samsung 500GB Internal SSD – https://amzn.to/2SLalCi
Corsair 32 GB RAM – https://amzn.to/3dffhqO
EVGA 650W Power Supply – https://amzn.to/2zefOKQ
Computer Case – https://amzn.to/3dnZqGp
Graphics Card – https://amzn.to/2YGenzF
MSI Motherboard – https://amzn.to/2L8HzHj
AMD Ryzen 7 Processor – https://amzn.to/2YDvK3Q
