Looking for desk layout improvement ideas

[Goobley]

Well I got a bit of money for Christmas (and my Birthday) and I'm looking to improve the layout of my desk for productivity reasons. I'm currently in student accommodation so I can't physically move the desk or the shelves (everything is screwed and glued). I'm an astrophysics student and do some game dev on the side. My time is spent probably 50/50 paper/computer. When I'm working on paper, my laptop moves off the desk and I shuffle the keyboard up, this gives me lots of room, however I'm not finding the computer arrangement great especially after having been used to a proper dual screen setup in the past.
Here's my desk:

I'm looking at spending the money I got on a second screen and vesa mounting system for the two. Possibly something like this:


or this: if I went vertical.

The thing is, I don't know what to go for. I was thinking of getting something with more pixels than the normal 1080p as it's useful to be able to have a 1080p window + stuff. I've also thought of getting say a qhd (or an ultrawide) and turning my current monitor portrait for coding. I just really don't know. What do you guys think about improving this layout?

Cheers!

[herulach]

Well I got a bit of money for Christmas (and my Birthday) and I'm looking to improve the layout of my desk for productivity reasons. I'm currently in student accommodation so I can't physically move the desk or the shelves (everything is screwed and glued). I'm an astrophysics student and do some game dev on the side. My time is spent probably 50/50 paper/computer.

By 50/50 paper computer you mean 50/50 drinking playing KSP right? Cos if not you're doing it wrong

Depends how you use your second monitor - At work I have my second screen on the left and use it for reference stuff. In your case I'd have it over the drawers and the main monitor in the middle. then use the space to the right for your laptop. Unless you desperately need the space under the monitor to shove stuff back into or have to have them exactly at a particular angle I'd not spend the money on one. Particularly as it looks like you can't get down the back of the desk for the clamp type so you'd need the big stand ones anyway.

Mousemat wise, my econo option when I was at uni (and before 'gaming' pads were a thing) was a big sheet of teflon baking sheet held down with double sided tape. Flat enough to not be bothered about moving it to put paper on. I've now got a razer sphex which is the same kind of idea but a bit better looking.

Monitors depend hugely on what you're doing. For gaming I have a QHD (main monitor - Crossover 29") and a 1080p secondary which gets used for maps, videos, twitch etc.

At work I have a pair of 1440p widescreens. THe extra space is amazing for spreadsheets and stuff, but I much prefer ultrawide for gaming.

[Goobley]

Thanks for the reply and analysis.

By 50/50 paper computer you mean 50/50 drinking playing KSP right? Cos if not you're doing it wrong

Haha, I've only had one assignment that involved the use of ksp so far

Depends how you use your second monitor - At work I have my second screen on the left and use it for reference stuff. In your case I'd have it over the drawers and the main monitor in the middle. then use the space to the right for your laptop. Unless you desperately need the space under the monitor to shove stuff back into or have to have them exactly at a particular angle I'd not spend the money on one. Particularly as it looks like you can't get down the back of the desk for the clamp type so you'd need the big stand ones anyway.

I'd love to have a monitor under those shelves but whoever designed this setup clearly didn't think about external monitors as it's 33 cm from the top of the desk to the bottom of the shelves. It would probably have to be > 20" to fit in. My current 23" is just over 40cm tall.

My second monitor (when I have one) is mainly used for reference documents too. Many of which are portrait PDFs, code, or normal websites, which I feel may work quite well on a portrait monitor.

Clever idea with the mousemat, mine's a bit bedraggled around the edges, but it's a cloth Corsair one from a couple of years back. Still working pretty well.

Monitors depend hugely on what you're doing. For gaming I have a QHD (main monitor - Crossover 29") and a 1080p secondary which gets used for maps, videos, twitch etc.

At work I have a pair of 1440p widescreens. THe extra space is amazing for spreadsheets and stuff, but I much prefer ultrawide for gaming.

In the picture on the OP both monitors have Vim open with the paper I'm writing at the moment (latex). This is a fairly normal occurrence. Vim, MATLAB, Xcode (When I plug my laptop in), Unity, Browser (obviously) are the majority of the applications I use. In general all of these things benefit from more screen real estate and it's rare that I'm able to spend more than 6-8 hours a week gaming during term, so it's a minor concern.

Last year I had the computer case under the shelves and the monitor in the middle. The current layout definitely feels much more optimised (reclaimed the space from the case), but I think it could be better.

The only possible place where a clamp could go is on the side where my monitor is now, as the top protrudes a good 80mm (worktop style). Hmm will have to consider things. I'll also be moving to a smaller keyboard soon, as I'm a religious vim user and feel quite content to chop off the right half of the keyboard (prefer chorded typing on a matrix board so i will probably build a 40-60% chorded keyboard).

One other thing I have considered is unscrewing the shelves from the wall, they're only held up with 4 screws into plugs and I could put them back discretely when I move out/have room inspection and this would indeed let me reclaim that desk space, and there's possibly a patch of floor they could go on.

It's not overly apparent from the photo I took but this desk is very shallow - screen base + keyboard is essentially the full depth, this means larger monitors are probably fairly impractical as I may not be able to sit far enough from them. i heard 24" qhd's were coming, but I have yet to see one on sale in the UK and I bet they're prohibitively expensive...