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2025 has brought all kinds of new challenges, one of which I find myself now recovering from a recent unexpected surgery.

So now guess who gets to work from home for the next six weeks, Whoo-hoo!

Works getting me a generic sit stand desk, but the time has now come to finally retire my SEC writing desk, the absolute chonker with a bookshelf at the front, and removable base, but I've always felt like it sat a little bit too low anyway which probably contributed to my injury.

(It was caused by powerlifting if you're interested...)

Anyway, after sampling what was on offer at my local office supply and furniture stores, I lamented having to buy a new sit stand desk only to be pleasantly surprised by the boutique option that Desky offered. - trying not to shill, but you do remember the good product purchases, and the bad ones... - like a knock off designer chair that I once bought from Aldi I almost immediately kicked to the curb after sitting in it.

I ended up settling for the Desky Dual Sit Stand Desk with a Jarrah Legno Melamine finish. - I umm and uhh’ed over getting one with a hardwood finish but figured this would always be a good shed\workshop desk if I ever change my mind.

Now on to my thoughts...

A few thoughts about the Desky setup, it's neat overall, but it wasn't my first choice.

Nothing else I saw had the tower PC caddy that would fit my unit, although one problem I've discovered is my tower vibrates a fair bit which creates A resonance even when the desk is at rest, I'm going to see if this is solvable by placing a custom-made rubber gasket between the caddy and the rails.

Installing the caddy was also not a pleasant experience, as the tolerances were too tight, and it required a little bit of finessing with a rubber mallet.

The desk controller, at the same time is a little bit overkill as there's even a Bluetooth app that I haven't bothered to try out yet, but at the same time there's no way to write custom code for it, I would love it if I could connect an ESP32\Ardiuno\RPI through via Bluetooth to it, and stick an RF hat on that, and use that to control the fan, light and blinds in my office, all from the push of one button panel. - I think I'm just going to have to knock something together custom, as the desky controller has different modes for RGB lighting, things I normally wouldn't care for, it would be neat if I could hack it, I have seen some home assist integrations, but the goal is to use the buttons on the desk to control dumb devices locally rather than use a third party app to control the desk. - let's just see what shenanigans I can come up with...

Post installation and setup

One problem that I need to solve with the new desk is a very noticeable vibration coming from the attached PC caddy.

At first, I was going to say negative things about the build quality of the product but now that I've narrowed it down to the front fan of my PC case, which has always had some issues with its bearings, and one time when I was trying to clean it I chipped a blade off it, it's been a problem that I've just simply ignored for years aside from the occasional groaning on cold morning startups.

It wasn't a problem when the computer sat on the floor but now it hangs freely from the desk.

One work around for the moment is to use my MacBook Pro which makes no noise at all and is kind of weird when my PC isn't turned on, but I use a lot of Windows apps and there's no point in remoting into it if it needs to be turned on and running anyway.

I'd made an attempt to stop it by stuffing rubber into air gaps where the caddy meets the desk in an attempt to absorb the vibration, and that helped a little bit, but the problem just got worse as the rubber bits fell out.

For troubleshooting, I popped the dust cover off the front of my computer and put my finger against it to stop it from moving and the vibration went away, I then repeated this with the fan below it which doesn't have a bearing problem, and the vibration was still there.

So, threw a simple process of elimination by being able to determine where the vibration is coming from, I can determine that it's the wobbly fan at fault, I just don't want to have to dismount my computer from the caddy because it's a pain in the arse to put back on, but I wonder if I can replace it without needing to take the computer off... 🤔

It's just one of those problems that's going to bug me for a while, and I don't really want to spend time fixing, but I feel some relief in knowing that it is at least solvable.

Video related, isopropyl alcohol bottle on my desk vibrating with the resonance.

Update: 20th June 2025

I unplugged the offending fan, and the vibration went away, but to my surprise, the grinding noise that's sometimes there, sometimes not, and usually only lasts a few minutes was still present, it turns out it's coming from the fan below the broken one, so there's two fans to replace which is preferable because I hate the idea of a colour mismatch.

Update 2: 21th June 2025

I've installed the new fans, and it's dead quiet, almost MacBook Pro levels of quiet, I had no idea it was this bad, wondering if the bearings wore out overtime or it was like that from the start, pic is of the broken fan and some lose parts found inside, I'm really glad that l was able to install them without taking the computer off the desk caddy as it was a pain in the arse to put on.

Update 3: 21th June 2025

Oh, I now hear a light clicking noise, nothing to be concerned about, but I completely forgot I put an HDD in this thing as a scratch disk, I guess I've never heard it 'whirl' and seek before because of how noisy the fans were... 🤯