Playing PC games from the couch. A desk solution?

Wavey

Evening all,

I want to set up my PC in the sitting room but I dont have the space for a full PC desk.

I am trying to find a desk on casters that has an angled or swivel keyboard/mouse support that can be used comfortably from a couch. Obviously the couch is at a much lower height than a normal PC desk seat.

Google is not spitting out any solutions for me.

Are any of you guys gaming on your PC from your couch?
What is your set up?

Wavey

eddhorse

http://www.destructoid.com/the-gamers-desk-is-looking-to-make-couch-based-pc-gaming-more-comfortable-91384.phtml

http://www.gizmag.com/logitech-laptop-desk/10542/

Not too sure what you are looking for apart from these

uberpixie

Wavey wrote: »

Evening all,

I want to set up my PC in the sitting room but I dont have the space for a full PC desk.

I am trying to find a desk on casters that has an angled or swivel keyboard/mouse support that can be used comfortably from a couch. Obviously the couch is at a much lower height than a normal PC desk seat.

Google is not spitting out any solutions for me.

Are any of you guys gaming on your PC from your couch?
What is your set up?

Wavey

get a large piece of wood to put on your lap that is wide enough and long enough to take a keyboard and mouse.....

Thats it!

Played an entire LAN sitting someones couch with a "lap board" and it was pretty comfy.

fuelinjection

You don't need a desktop PC to play games these days.
Just sell it and/or buy a fast laptop with a great gaming graphics card to play ... example Acer Aspire 8930G. 19 inch screen and maximum graphics, you won't miss the old PC.

docmol

fuelinjection wrote: »

You don't need a desktop PC to play games these days.
Just sell it and/or buy a fast laptop with a great gaming graphics card to play ... example Acer Aspire 8930G. 19 inch screen and maximum graphics, you won't miss the old PC.

You are very misinformed! Laptops that can play games worth a damn are very expensive, almost all laptops have really bad integrated graphics, usually by Intel. If your idea of a game is solitare you'll be ok with a laptop, but a gaming laptop that can play any modern game is gonna be megabucks. To upgrade a desktop is easy, try putting a new graphics card into a laptop! I'm 15 years a PC tech and I've never seen it done. The perfect solution to the original posters question might be to use his TV as a monitor and to get a decent wireless keyboard and mouse + lapboard as above.

fuelinjection

docmol wrote: »

You are very misinformed! Laptops that can play games worth a damn are very expensive, almost all laptops have really bad integrated graphics, usually by Intel. If your idea of a game is solitare you'll be ok with a laptop, but a gaming laptop that can play any modern game is gonna be megabucks. To upgrade a desktop is easy, try putting a new graphics card into a laptop! I'm 15 years a PC tech and I've never seen it done. The perfect solution to the original posters question might be to use his TV as a monitor and to get a decent wireless keyboard and mouse + lapboard as above.

Not at all. In fact, you sound a bit out of date but thats okay with old people these days the old brain gets slow and change is not allowed or rejected.
My laptop (desktop replacment) was 900 euro and that was a year ago. I am sure they have some down in price now. Graphics card is a NVIDIA GeoForce 9600GT M.
Screen is an 18.5 inch high def 1080P and is awesome. Games run at 100% speeds and settings - I do not have to compromise anything.
Trust me you will not miss an obsolete desktop PC.

docmol

I might be older than you but I can guarantee I've built a lot more machines, everything from 8 xeon servers to ultimate gaming rigs. You can upgrade a desktop in minutes and get a lot more gaming life out of it, you can't practically do that with a laptop. I'm building a pc later today for €350 that would lay a horrible smackdown on your laptop. When that machine gets out of date a new graphics card will keep it going for longer. If you think the 9600 gt m is a good gaming card you have low expectations! PS: less of the personal! What's your fps in crysis?

fuelinjection

docmol wrote: »

I might be older than you but I can guarantee I've built a lot more machines, everything from 8 xeon servers to ultimate gaming rigs. You can upgrade a desktop in minutes and get a lot more gaming life out of it, you can't practically do that with a laptop. I'm building a pc later today for €350 that would lay a horrible smackdown on your laptop. When that machine gets out of date a new graphics card will keep it going for longer. If you think the 9600 gt m is a good gaming card you have low expectations! PS: less of the personal! What's your fps in crysis?

thats old news now man, building a PC used to the best way to keep up with life but nowadays the PC components are so expensive and by the time you built your "dream" config, the times have moved on and all you are left with is a big lump of expensive obsolete pieces that nobody wants on ebay.

Desktops like mine are desktop replacements and will keep up with all expectations and can be upgraded if necessary. My latop does everything I need with all the games I need as well as High_Def video and Guitar/music production. You will NEVER use 100 % of your ferarri desktop PC, it is for pure porn or getting one up on some other PC nerd on the internet that they are built. You will never use any maths programs or engineering that runs the CPU at 100% and just like that the CPU for graphics will never run at 100% unless you are running some program from the internet to compare testicles with another PC builder. My point is you never use it, its all for show.

death1234567

fuelinjection wrote: »

thats old news now man, building a PC used to the best way to keep up with life but nowadays the PC components are so expensive and by the time you built your "dream" config, the times have moved on and all you are left with is a big lump of expensive obsolete pieces that nobody wants on ebay.

Desktops like mine are desktop replacements and will keep up with all expectations and can be upgraded if necessary. My latop does everything I need with all the games I need as well as High_Def video and Guitar/music production. You will NEVER use 100 % of your ferarri desktop PC, it is for pure porn or getting one up on some other PC nerd on the internet that they are built. You will never use any maths programs or engineering that runs the CPU at 100% and just like that the CPU for graphics will never run at 100% unless you are running some program from the internet to compare testicles with another PC builder. My point is you never use it, its all for show.

:eek: My what a steaming pile of **** that post is. The point is when the time comes to upgrade your gaming desktop it'll cost you ~€200, when its time to upgrade your gaming laptop it'll cost you ~€1000 cos you'll have to buy a brand new one.

In fact your GFX card is already out of date:

leninbenjamin

lol, fuelinjection you're talking absolute sh*te. have a good look at this thread.

OP short of getting a custom desk built methinks you're best bet is something like this.

stevenmu

fuelinjection wrote: »

thats old news now man, building a PC used to the best way to keep up with life but nowadays the PC components are so expensive and by the time you built your "dream" config, the times have moved on and all you are left with is a big lump of expensive obsolete pieces that nobody wants on ebay.

Desktops like mine are desktop replacements and will keep up with all expectations and can be upgraded if necessary. My latop does everything I need with all the games I need as well as High_Def video and Guitar/music production. You will NEVER use 100 % of your ferarri desktop PC, it is for pure porn or getting one up on some other PC nerd on the internet that they are built. You will never use any maths programs or engineering that runs the CPU at 100% and just like that the CPU for graphics will never run at 100% unless you are running some program from the internet to compare testicles with another PC builder. My point is you never use it, its all for show.

Do you realise that everything you said also applies to laptops, except to get the equivalent laptop you pay a ton more?

L31mr0d

Laptop tech has come a long way. I was dropping the jaws of the guys in work the other day when I was showing them Crysis: Warhead running on my €580 laptop, and this laptop would be considered medium to low tier (Fujitsu Pi 3560)

However, a Tower PC set-up will be cheaper, more powerful and easily upgradable, there's no two ways about it.

Cuddlesworth

death1234567 wrote: »

:eek: My what a steaming pile of **** that post is. The point is when the time comes to upgrade your gaming desktop it'll cost you ~€200, when its time to upgrade your gaming laptop it'll cost you ~€1000 cos you'll have to buy a brand new one.

In fact your GFX card is already out of date:

A 9600 gt M would be about 50-70% of the performance of the desktop model. So not even on that chart.

leninbenjamin

L31mr0d wrote: »

Laptop tech has come a long way. I was dropping the jaws of the guys in work the other day when I was showing them Crysis: Warhead running on my €580 laptop, and this laptop would be considered medium to low tier (Fujitsu Pi 3560)

Crysis is also a 3 year old game now, it can't really be considered the latest and greatest. Laptop tech will always be well behind desktops because of the heat and size issues. And then of course, games tech has actually been slow enough to develop because consoles are still stuck on DX9, this has allowed laptops to slowly make up some ground.

edit: and you also got a ridiculously good deal on that laptop, lets not forget.

Overheal

I use a TV Dinner stand aand a laptop.

InReality

If you do a "replacement policy" ever 18 months it can work out ok.

If you buy an expensive laptop ( 1500) , sell it and buy a new one every 18 months ( 600 ) , then you can get good gaming on a laptop over the long term.

inital cost is the thing. Gaming laptops have come a long way esp Asus ones. Excellent Warrenty , Spec and prices.

L31mr0d

leninbenjamin wrote: »

Crysis is also a 3 year old game now

It's still my litmus test game though. If something can run Crysis with most of the bells and whistles enabled it can run pretty much everything else.

Anyway, in regards to the OP, I find couch gaming never really works. You ever noticed that when people are playing racing games or playing anything seriously they lean forward and sit on the edge of the seat. Next time you have a few friends over watch them, they'll start off reclining on the couch but as you play more and people start getting more into it they'll all sit up and lean forward.

This position is not conducive to gaming comfortably with a KB/M.

That being said, I used to rent an apartment that had leather chairs like the ones from that old Maxell Ad. When I was off college for the day, I used to just pull the chair over to my PC, put my keyboard tray across the arms of the chair and then put the monitor on a bar stool in front of me. Twas awesome.

Overheal

leninbenjamin wrote: »

Crysis is also a 3 year old game now, it can't really be considered the latest and greatest.

Not the latest but quite Great.

Mathematicians will always have computer models developed long before they can be performed by existing hardware. Crysis is an example of an engine that was built with future hardware in mind. Whereas Source engine, say, was built with existing hardware in mind, and a lot of Scalability.

Wossack

the old wireless 360 remote, and a dinovo mini to get games started is working for me - though, predictably terrible for anything other then console ports... great with prince of persia, gta, saboteur, dead space etc etc

Wavey

Thanks for all the replies lads.
Although a little off topic in places!

I was thinking getting something like this and mounting it on the wall at the end of the couch with one of the gaming boards mentioned earlier in this thread.

Can anyone reccommend any Irish suppliers of LCD arm mounts similar to this? I will need a fairly long one. (That's what she said).

Thanks guys and happy Friday to all.

Wavey.

the_syco

If I were to game from a couch, I'd go back to using a Logitech Trackman. The ball is under your thumb, so no mouse mat needed. As for the keyboard, I'd get something like this, but maybe a cheaper version. Maybe a 2nd hand one from adverts.ie.

AlmightyCushion

docmol wrote: »

try putting a new graphics card into a laptop! I'm 15 years a PC tech and I've never seen it done.

It can be done, I've done it but I can't recommend it. Only a stupidly small amount of laptops will have an upgradeable graphics card and the replacement cards are stupidly expensive.

@fuelinjection - Desktops really are the way to go when it comes to gaming. A decent laptop is still grand for gaming but for high end jaw dropping graphics laptops suck. And this is coming from someone who has paid a lot of money for gaming laptops.

@OP - You could have your pc hooked up to the tv, then use a wireless keyboard and mouse. I've done this before. I just kept the keyboard on my lap and used the mouse on a small table.