In the past, Lian Li built a small handful of desk chassis, and its latest one is slightly different in that it can transform from an ordinary seated desk to a standing desk. Meet the Lian Li DK-04.
Unlike most Lian Li cases, this one isn’t entirely made of aluminum. The body is, but the legs are made of iron. The top of the desk is made from a single large piece of tempered glass.
Inside, there is room for an ATX motherboard and up to four dual-slot graphics cards that are no longer than 320 mm, as well as a full-size ATX power supply and eight 3.5” or 2.5” drives. The front I/O consists of four USB 3.0 ports, the standard pair of HD audio jacks, and power and reset switches. Next to the front I/O is space for a 5.25” drive.
A total of eight fans handle cooling, with four 120 mm fans located at the front and an equal number and size at the rear for exhaust. Lian Li included dust filters for the front and power supply intake locations. If you want to install water cooling, the rear supports two 240 mm radiators, whereas the front intake can be home to an enormous 480 mm radiator.
Another design aspect worth mentioning is the angled intake with the narrower front. Older desk chassis from Lian Li had a thickness that was consistent from front to rear, whereas this new one has a thinner front end where the fans angle down. This may seem like a subtle change but should in practice make it much more compatible with armrests on desk chairs and increase overall use comfort.
You can adjust the height of the desk through a range of 67.5 cm through 116 cm using the two arrow keys on the height adjustment pad, where you can also save four height settings with the memory function.
Lian Li priced the DK-04 standing desk at $1,499 with availability slated for May 10.
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Also, if they created a replaceable front panel for front panel connectors, and replaceable front-panel connection hubs, you could view this as an investment of sorts.
And one more thing... If you're going to make this thick enough to accommodate a 140mm cooler why not add 2.5 more cm so just about any cooler can be used? The desk is bulky already. There's no attempt at being slim here so why not make it thicker by a little bit?
When USB 3.0 (or USB in general!) and it's very-noticeable bright-blue slot goes by the way of the dinosaur, it's going to date this $1500 desk.
I think it's a very cool concept. Easy to swap out parts for the ever-evolving PC. Easy to keep clean. Stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight! I do like it.
You just put your mouse and keyboard on top. Those slide out keyboard trays are stupid.
The slide out trays were originally designed to deal with the fact that the standard desk height is above the comfortable level for a keyboard. This can be adjusted to the right height so it negates that. I can be nice to be able to stow the keyboard and mouse away but a lot of those trays are poorly made anyway.
There are numerous monitor stands that provide a place to stash the keyboard and mouse when not in use. A bit of a throwback to the days when only a few activities were done on the computer. Nowadays it's more the opposite, with many people not seeing a need to ever put the keyboard and mouse aside.