This project started because I had the idea of optimizing my basement for working out. I decided to upgrade my home gym and pickup a water rower. The idea is to put the water rower and treadmill where my current desk is to get the equipment as far away from my children’s rooms as possible. I want to move my desk in the corner where my exercise bike is currently.
Planning
Here is my layout; I envisioned with the eventual tv upgrade for zwifting. One of the things I knew I had to do right away was add an additional cable run in my basement for ethernet if I planned on moving my computer. The other problem I have is my current monitor setup.
With the current setup; My monitors hang over the edge of the back of my desk, so if I was to move into the corner I intend I would have to swap to a curved monitor or something similar. I threw my monitors up on a local discord for my town’s pc gamers and put them priced to sell. I picked up a 34″ curved monitor from MSI here.
I didn’t need anything fancy; I just wanted a 3440 x 1440, curved, and display port. If you go up with refresh rate the monitors skyrocket into the thousands of dollars.
Wire Pull
Added a line of cat6a cable for my computer on where it should go; As I’m editing this blog post, I realized I don’t have a 10 GB nic card in my desktop computer; will do some research on this, as I could easily add a PCI-e card to my computer. Update: 10gb nic cards are somewhat expensive. I was seeing the cheapest around 60$ mark and in the past, I had snagged the same card for 25$. I am planning on keeping my ear to the ground, but for the time being, I am going to skip adding the 10gb nic.
Storage
I had been meaning to clean out my storage area for a while and get re-organized; with a side goal of trying to find my wahoo tickrx which I misplaced a few months ago. I won’t get into too much detail; but between my wife & I we were able to tackle this in two days. I was dumb enough to not get a before picture, but you can see how much garbage we ended up actually having.
Finishing Up
Once we had everything out; we combed through it and donated/trashed as much as we could. The storage area after we cleaned everything was probably 1/4th of what we had initially. I then proceeded to move around my desk and treadmill to its new locations. It was late so I decided to finish up in the morning and connect my laptop while I wait for my monitor to come in.
Updates: 05/02/2020
I ran into a few issues.
Monitor
Network Speeds
Lighting
Monitor: The MSI monitor was back-ordered and I since decided I want a ips monitor instead. Currently all 34″ 3440 x 1440 ips monitors that have a 100+ refresh rate are sold out or 1000$. Will have to wait. In the downtime I will be using a 40″ Roku Tv.
Network speeds: I did a speed test after noticing my network was acting up; my computer was only getting around 80 Mbps down which is odd considering I had ~400 prior to moving. I tested the jack with a fluke tester and saw that I dropped a pair while wiring. Fixed it asap, as well as found someone selling a 10gb nic card for cheap (AJP.net) $18.
Lighting: The new location for my computer made my webcam not look so great. I attempted to adjust with a desk lamp but I’m not happy. Future post likely coming about lighting / camera upgrades. Might have to wait for black friday or something similar before I pull the trigger.
No Lamp 
Lamp Lights On 
Lamp Lights Off
Update: 05/04/2020
I waited patiently and amazon restocked the Acer XR342CK Monitor. I jumped on this deal as
I did my research and concluded that at this price point with these specs this makes the most sense as your price for performance monitor. The highlights of the monitor are 34″ 3440 x 1440 curved ips with 100hz refresh with 1 ms response. It also has a USB C which is awesome!
I also got my 10gb nic card in the mail from AJP! I had my son help me throw it in my tower, and we were up and running in ~ 10 minutes. I had to pull the drivers and we were good to go!
Update: 05/15/2020
I got my monitors in & setup on Friday; I added some cable management but decided I want to keep my old tv for a second display for things like streamlabs etc…
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