Battlestation Reviews: AJ’s Old Setups Edition

In this edition of Battlestation Reviews: AJ’s old setups!

Alright, so technically this isn’t really a Battlestation Review, since I’m not reviewing anything. This one’s more of a blog post, where I’m going to share pictures of some of my old setups. Most of them look like garbage, because I was broke and didn’t really know much about aesthetics at the time.

This first one isn’t really a battlestation, it’s more like a work station. This was taken in 2009, while working a cafeteria job at a Sears shipping facility in Nanticoke, PA:

 

The picture was taken as a joke, I think I posted it to the front page of the website with the caption “Hard at work”. I actually remember the day that this was taken, because it was the one time that I ever had to work an overnight shift. The Sears facility met some kind of safety goal, so all shifts were awarded with a steak dinner. Myself and the woman I was dating at the time had to work a full day, then come back around 9 PM to get things ready and serve the overnight workers. Then we had to work a full shift the following day. I think we worked for 18 hours straight? The things I did for money (and pussy).

I eventually left that woman in 2010, and moved back in with my parents in Philly. When I left home originally, my sister took over my old bedroom, which was about 8’x15′. When I came back, I was forced to move in to her old bedroom, which was around 8’x10′. It was only slightly larger than the average prison cell.

I rebuilt my money over the next couple of years, and by 2012 I had this setup:

 

Of all the desks I’ve had, this is actually one of my favorites. I loved having all the little storage hutches and the keyboard tray. These particle board Office Max desks are ugly as sin, but they always felt cozy to me.

Living at home again made it so much easier to actually have money. Up in the mountains I was living paycheck to paycheck, I might have had $10 in my bank account. But now I had a job, and while I was only making about $9 an hour, I didn’t have many real expenses, so I was able to start buying all kinds of things. Mostly booze, pills, and pot, but I also used some money to upgrade my computer, and ended up developing a Newegg addiction (I think I mentioned this in a few articles?). I dropped $125 on an NZXT Phantom computer case. I also got myself a cheap second monitor, which I used for Winamp and a notepad file.

I don’t know what compelled me to choose that puke-green paint job for the walls. It looks ugly in the pictures, but it looked ten times uglier in person. Once I moved out again my mom painted over it. I think it’s pinkish now?

Because my room was so small, I was constantly rearranging it:

 

I picked up a laptop because… I honestly don’t remember. I’d usually bring it with me when I crashed at someone’s house, but it didn’t really serve me much of a purpose beyond doing things like playing Civilization II or shitposting on the go.

Also pictured is my old Logitech G15 keyboard. It was the first backlit keyboard I ever owned, and it also had a small LCD screen that displayed whatever song was playing. I think I still have it in my basement somewhere. Definitely one of the coolest keyboards I’ve ever owned. I wonder if it would still work with my current computer?

I eventually moved away from the particle board desks, and went with a corner desk made of black glass:

 

I still have that desk, disassembled and put away in my basement. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it, if anything.

The downside of that desk was that I no longer had the back board to hide cables. Which meant I had to learn proper cable management.

Speaking of cable management, here’s the inside of my NZXT Phantom:

 

Tell me that’s not the sexiest cable management you’ve ever seen.

While I was working at ShopRite and wearing a bogus nametag that said “Pablo”, I began a bootleg DVD ring. Pictured here is a collection of DVDs slated to be burnt:

 

I usually charged about $5 per DVD. On a normal week I’d rake in an extra $200 from various coworkers and their family members. I even drafted up plans to infiltrate the movie theater’s projection room and acquire high definition copies of movies while they were still in theaters. Obviously I never went through with this ambitious yet stupid idea, and eventually streaming killed my operation.

I also built and fixed computers for more side cash. My parents gave me some basement space for this:

 

For building PCs, I’d generally charge the cost of parts, plus another $200 for labor. I saved money by using a pirated version of Windows 7 (I always disclosed this to clients). I’d also keep an eye out for discounts on bundles, and grab those too.

In 2016, I moved into my current apartment, and after some fussing around came up with this setup:

 

This is where I began experimenting with LED strips. I had a small light strip under my desk where the keyboard tray was, one behind my monitors, and another under my shelves. I also put up some shelves and decorated the setup with knickknacks, like the North Korean flag that one of my friends got me as a gag gift.

I also acquired a third monitor at the thrift store. It was a piece of shit, it had a line running through it, and probably only lasted me a year, but I was only using it for Winamp, so it really didn’t matter.

I pingponged between the NZXT Phantom and a smaller case, as you’ll see from the next photos. I loved the NZXT Phantom, and I still do, but it’s just too damn big to be practical for most setups. I still have the case in my basement, and I’m waiting for the day where I can use it again.

For some reason I decided to remove the corner piece from the desk and put the two halves next to each other:

 

I still think that this looked kind of nice, even if it never felt right to me.

And yes, that’s Rainmeter you see on the desktop. I spent so many hours teaching myself how to customize that shit. Does anyone even still use Rainmeter? That program was a CPU hog, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t look slick.

After spending too much time on r/Battlestations, I ran to Ikea and bought a Linnmon/Alex combo:

 

I still regret making this choice. Eight years later and I hate these fucking desks. There’s no keyboard tray, they’re uncomfortable, and they’re cheaply made overpriced crap. The only good thing about them is that they look aesthetically pleasing.

Speaking of pleasing, my girlfriend wasn’t too pleased that I framed a photograph of former Nightwish singer Tarja Turunen. I told her that, unless she wanted to step up and become one of the queens of symphonic metal, she had to fucking deal with it.

She eventually got her way, and I replaced the Tarja picture with other posters:

 

I also began decorating with foam acoustic tiles. Let’s be honest here, those cheap foam panels you buy from Amazon don’t really do shit for soundproofing a room. They look nice though when placed correctly.

This was taken when I was trying to kick off a streaming career, which is why you see the work lamp clipped next to the desk.

This was the other side of the room:

 

I continued to expand, adding more LED lights, Funko Pops, and some other collectibles:

 

I also bought a TV that served as a third monitor for games and movies.

This setup always felt kind of cozy to me, but I never got used to having the monitors aligned vertically.

Here’s a shot of the room at night:

 

I later made a trip to Ikea and picked up more of those God-awful white tables, having them go around the entire room:

 

You’ll probably remember this pic from one of the previous Battlestation Reviews.

The chair is another one of my regret purchases. It’s a Shaquille O’Neal Zephyrus from Office Max. I paid $500 for the thing, then spent the next two years in denial of how much it sucked. It doesn’t recline, it doesn’t even lean back, the headrest constantly falls down, and it’s just generally awkward as fuck to sit in. The only positive thing about it was the reaction I usually got from telling people that my computer chair was “a Shaq chair”.

This was right around when I discovered how cheap AliExpress was, and I ordered a bunch of those plastic black and white tiles. This picture doesn’t really capture the way the light hits the gloss, it actually looks pretty cool. My girlfriend busts my balls over it, telling me it’s so bright that astronauts can see it from space.

I also acquired orange square thingies, and lined the top of the room with them. They were expensive as hell, and I only ended up doing half the room with them. I should have went with the regular acoustic foam panels instead, and I’ll probably end up doing that later.

Finally, we have my setup as it is today:

 

I picked up a small spotlight for the shelves of collectables because I got tired of that corner always looking so dark. One of these days I’ll also swap out those wooden shelves for ones made of clear acrylic glass (Plexiglass). I have the plastic sitting in my basement, I’ve just been lazy about cutting it down and putting it up.

I covered the LED strips on the ceiling with polyester stuffing to give them a cloud effect. I’m ashamed to say that I had never thought of doing this myself, I was at a friend’s house and her teenage son had done it in his room. It looked cool (and still looks cooler than mine) so I swaggerjacked the idea. Sorry but not sorry, Eric.

You might notice that I ditched the Shaq chair. The chair you see here is custom-built from the passenger seat of a 2004 Chevy Impala. I got tired of every computer chair being complete dog shit, and Herman Millers are the most expensive overrated chairs on the fucking planet, so I decided to make my own. My logic was that car seats are built to last for years, unlike your “gaming” chair which is built to last five minutes. I used the arms from the Shaq chair, and the bottom from another old computer chair, and custom-built a chair that’s comfy and durable. Maybe one day I’ll write an instructable on how to do it.

Some of the smaller additions are large mousepads on the tables, a three-tier shelf in the empty space that was under the wooden shelves on the left side of the picture, and a tablet for reading manga and e-books.

In the future, I plan to get rid of those Ikea desks (have I mentioned how much I fucking hate them?). I’ll probably end up ordering a bunch of oak and building my own desk. I might even get ambitious and design a desk with the computer built-in.

I’ve been thinking about getting another monitor. The two monitors I have are 27″ each. They’re 60 FPS max, and they fit awkward as fuck on the mount (it’s hard to tell from the picture but they’re both kind of crooked). I’ll probably buy a single large monitor, then mount the other two above it.

I also want to get a small couch and put it on the left so I can watch TV and play games on it instead of my chair. If you look closely at the bottom-left corner you’ll see my mini fridge. I’ve had that thing for 13 years now, I’m amazed it still works. When it finally craps out I’ll probably replace it with a smaller one and get that couch.

Here’s the rest of the room:

 

 

Add the style of the wall to the list of things I hate about this room. I’m not sure what it’s called, it’s basically a coating of raised plaster. It’s ugly as sin, and underneath it is some kind of crumbly green drywall. Even if it were my wall to paint, I can’t imagine this style of wall looking good with any color.

I shared the wall with the shelves in the Battlestation Review article I mentioned earlier. You’ll see that I added another acrylic shelf on the bottom, and a shit ton of cheap anime figures from AliExpress to go with it. There’s also an incense holder (hence the smoke), more Mitsuri figures, and even a Hatsune Miku cassette tape. You’ll probably also notice that the clocks have different times. That’s because apparently nobody makes a clock that’s worth a damn anymore. The one on the wall looks cool, but it gets fast by a minute each week.

I keep debating whether or not to take down the Star Wars dartboard and put up more shelves. I don’t remember the last time I even threw darts. I should probably leave it up though, since the last thing I need is more space to buy more cheap Chinese junk. I’ll probably end up throwing more shelves above the door though.

I have a 32″ CRT TV sitting in my basement that I’d love to bring upstairs and set up in the room so I can play my retro consoles, but there’s no room for it. The Ikea tables (which I fucking hate) can’t support it, so I’m probably going to have to build a table for it myself. I’ve thought about building an arcade cabinet and putting the TV in there along with the consoles and an RCA switch box, but if I do that it won’t be until after I build a new computer desk.

So that’s the evolution of my setups. There are other ones that I can’t share because I don’t have pictures for some reason. I really wanted to share my setup from 2007. The desk looked kind of like this, except it was a lighter shade of brown and was raised on the left for a printer stand:

 

 

If someone could find a picture of the original desk, I’d be happy. I know it came from Office Max, and I bought it sometime in the mid 2000’s.

There was also my setup from when I moved into my buddy Tom’s basement rec room, sometime in 2015, but the one picture I have kind of sucks:

 

 

Looking back at some of these old setups has made me feel nostalgic, but that’s probably just because of all the fun memories I have sitting at them, and how much work I put into improving them. Very few things now compare to the dopamine hit that came with rearranging my room and significantly upgrading stuff. There’s definitely some beauty to be found in their simplicity. My current setup just seems noisy and cluttered when you put it next to some of these. Maybe one day I’ll downgrade to something more minimalist.

Nah, who am I fucking kidding, I’ll probably slap up more LEDs and other cheap Chinese junk.