We've put together the best gaming desks out there - big, small, sitting, and standing - to help you find the perfect top for your setup.
Finding the best gaming desk for your space helps to elevate the experiences you have on your PC, both in terms of aesthetics and ergonomics. To save you the trouble of taking a chance on a surface that might not be the right fit, we’ve put together our picks of the best desks for gaming across the price and RGB spectrum. Ergonomics Office Chair
In addition to cost, both the size and strength of your next potential gaming desk are equally important considerations that should inform your purchasing decision – from weight capacity to price. We’re here to help you find a desk that is both an appropriate throne for the best gaming PC, and which can accommodate all the best gaming chairs.
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The Secretlab Magnus packs just about everything you could want into a gaming desk, boasting the same degree of high-quality construction as its Titan Evo gaming chairs. While its frame and top are heavy, making the Magnus somewhat unwieldy to put together by yourself, it’s this heft that gives it the ability to support a whopping 220lb / 100kg worth of weight.
It’s as smart as it is strong, too, both in terms of style and features. Every Secretlab Magnus has a built-in cable management system, saving you from the eyesore of cable spaghetti and giving your setup a clean look. There are a multitude of accessories that can further enhance the capabilities of the desk, but they are fairly pricey and aren’t a necessary purchase by any means.
A height-adjustable version is available, in the form of the Secretlab Magnus Pro and Pro XL, but both naturally carry a higher price.
Are you looking for a cheap desk for your gaming PC with one large monitor or two smaller ones? If so, this is going to be your best option. Visually it’s not the most stunning, and it’s only made of engineered wood, but honestly, it does a fine job and there’s not a lot that we can say against it.
In fact, we’re quite impressed by how sturdy this desk is. Considering its relatively simple construction, it can actually hold a fairly decent amount of weight. There are even little hooks on either end that you can Of course, you don’t want to overfill it anyway, since it’s quite small, but it’s good to know that it can hold quite a lot.
You don’t need to splash a big sum of cash to find a good value gaming desk, and the Ikea Utespelare is evidence of just that. Costing just $270 (£150), it’s surprisingly versatile, arriving with an included mesh cable tray and a height adjustment range of 12cm.
Naturally, given its budget-leaning price, the desk itself is made of cheaper but nonetheless rigid particleboard topped with melamine foil. Given how quickly fingerprints can accumulate on it, you’ll want to cover it with a large gaming mat to avoid needing to regularly wipe it down.
Sitting or standing in front of the Herman Miller Motia Gaming Desk provides a luxurious experience that few, if any, competitors can come close to. It both looks and feels the part of a premium worktop, with ergonomic expertise to boot, with 48cm of adjustable height. It even comes with a built-in collision sensor for extra piece of mind.
While its 12-year warranty should also ease any anxieties of spending $1,345, you are certainly paying a premium here for the Herman Miller branding. The Motia does, unfortunately, also have a few minor weaknesses, namely its limited monitor arm support and noticeable wobble when it’s set to its maximum height of 117cm.
A standing desk can make a world of difference to your back health and your overall quality of life. If you spend all day sitting at a desk working, then all evening sitting at a desk gaming, the chances are your back is going to be in pretty poor shape. If it’s not causing you pain now, it will be before you know it.
The Flexispot E7 is the best standing desk we’ve come across. It has dual motors in place so that it can easily be adjusted without any real physical input from you, and there’s a sensor on it so that you don’t risk it coming down and bonking the heads of children or animals that might be under it at even given moment.
It is expensive, and we wish it had been designed with more of an eye for cable management, but aside from that, we love it. It’s very well-designed and can hold quite a lot of weight. If you want a cheaper standing desk though, read on for our next entry…
As the popularity of standing desks grow, the cost of entry level models similarly fall, and our favorite of the bunch is the Flexispot E2. Rather than opt for a one-size-fits-all approach, Flexispot instead offers a variety of worktop materials with the E2, as well as selling the frame by itself, all in the service of letting you build the ideal desk for your budget.
Naturally, as a cheaper option, niceties such as cable management are something of an afterthought. You’ll want to watch the price of the Flexispot E2 as well, as you customize it, as while it may start at $310, it can cost much more. You’re also only covered with a three-year warranty, compared to the longer periods offered by more expensive options.
Given its small form factor, at 100cm wide, the Lian Li DK-04F should easily fit into most spaces you’d want to put a gaming desk in. Better still, it’s both stealthy and small, giving you the option to house your gaming desk beneath its glass worktop.
To be clear, awesome as this feature is, building a PC in a unique form factor naturally comes with its own challenges, supported component heights aside. Thankfully, the difficulty of constructing the desk itself isn’t something you’ll need to consider, as Lian Li are kind enough to ship the DK-04F pre-assembled.
We’ve been testing and using the best gaming desks for years, and have put together this list based on decades of experience. Products come and go, but the fundamentals of what you want from a gaming desk remain the same.
First of all, measure your space and decide how much room you have available to accommodate the desk, and how many monitors or peripherals you want to keep on top of it. You’ll also want to comfortably fit in a gaming chair behind it.
As well as physical dimensions, consider how much physical weight you want the desk to carry. If you main use a gaming laptop and small monitor, your weight requirements will be much lower than housing a gaming PC and the best 4K monitor on top. Generally speaking, the greater the load capacity, the more expensive the desk.
Design is more subjective, so we can’t make recommendations there. But you can find gaming desks in all manner of finishes and colors, from dark black with RGB accents to subtle, wood worktops. The construction of the table-top is an important consideration. If you’re going to be using monitor or microphone clamps, or may in the future, you’ll want a wood or metal – clamps and glass desks don’t mix.
It’s a good idea to set a budget, but paying more will get you more sophisticated cable management solutions such as nets, trays for power strips, or grommets,which all help to keep your whole setup tidy.
If you’ve already got an office desk, you might be wondering whether you need one of the best gaming desks instead. The answer isn’t always obvious.
If you’re currently gaming on your dining table or sit on your sofa, then investing in a dedicated gaming desk will be worth having it so that you can create an ergonomic setup with all of your gaming hardware.
However, if you have a good office desk already, don’t really want to spend a lot more money, or it isn’t yours to replace, you might just be able to pimp it up with a decent mouse pad or some RGB strip lights.
If you spend extended hours at your PC, it might be worth stretching your budget for a height-adjustable gaming desk. A standing desk can help you avoid developing a bad posture, as it allows you to alternate between standing and sitting throughout the day. We know that being sedentary for too long is harmful to our health, so being able to move around and continue gaming can only be a good thing.
Naturally, gaming setups are as heavy as they are elaborate, especially if you’re going for a triple monitor configuration. So, before investing in a new surface, it’s important to calculate exactly how much weight you need your desk to bear. Specialist gaming desks are usually designed to hold their ground when it comes to heavy equipment, with options like the Secretlab Magnus handling around 100kg.
For more help building your gaming space, read our guides on the best Amazon gaming chairs and the best office chairs. We’ll help you find the right choice in no time.
Office Chair Gaming Samuel Willetts Sam has spent the past two decades tinkering with computers, a tradition he proudly continues as a Hardware Editor for PCGamesN. For all things systems and components, he's your man. You'll regularly find his hands inside a PC, swapping out components from the likes of AMD, Intel, and Nvidia as fast as you can say Windows. Otherwise, you'll find him on the showfloor of CES and Computex, talking the night away about the latest pieces of shiny silicon. You may also know him from outlets such as Custom PC, PC Gamer, Pocket Tactics, T3, and TopTenReviews.