Trading Desk Setup: Width, Load and Cables
What a home trading desk needs: width and depth for several screens, the rated load, cable routing and screen height, with figures from OSHA and CCOHS.
A home trading setup asks more of a desk than a single laptop ever does. Several screens, a mini tower or a full PC, an arm or two, and a mains strip all have to share one surface, stay at a sensible height, and not fight each other for room. Before you buy, five things decide whether a desk copes: the width across the back for your screens, the depth from front to back, the weight it is rated to carry, the height range, and how it handles cables. This guide works through each as a measurement you can take with a tape, using screen-distance and height figures from OSHA and CCOHS, and ends with how the numbers land on a sit-stand desk.
What to check before you buy
Think in measurements, not in looks. Lay a tape across the back of the space and down its depth, and keep five figures in mind: the width your screens need side by side, the depth that lets you sit them at a comfortable viewing distance, the weight the desk is rated to carry, the height range, and whether the cables have somewhere to go. Get those right and the rest is taste. The sections below take each in turn, and the last one shows how they play out on one sit-stand desk.
Width and depth for several screens
Start with the screens you already own. Measure each monitor at its widest, including the stand foot if it rests on the desk, and add the numbers together. Then add a little space between each screen so the bezels are not jammed edge to edge, and a margin at each end for a speaker, a notebook or a mug. That total is the minimum width you need across the back. Two mainstream monitors usually settle onto a 120 cm top; three side by side is where most home desks run out of room, and an ultrawide or a monitor arm is often the saner answer in a tight room. We make the case for the 120 cm width in a small flat in a separate guide.
Depth matters just as much, because it sets how far your eyes sit from the glass. OSHA puts the preferred viewing distance between 50 and 100 cm, roughly 20 to 40 inches, from your eye to the front of the screen. CCOHS gives the same idea as a rule of thumb: about an arm's length away. For a deep screen on a stand, or two rows of them, you want enough depth that you can push the monitors back to that distance and still keep a keyboard and your forearms in front of them.
The weight your desk has to carry
It is easy to forget how much a trading rig weighs until it is all on one surface. Add up the monitors, any monitor arms, a desktop tower if it sits on top rather than on the floor, and the odds and ends: a dock, an uninterruptible power supply, a pair of speakers. Compare that total against the desk's rated load, which every honest maker publishes. A single-screen desk rarely troubles its rating; a four-screen wall with arms and a tower can get closer than you expect.
A monitor arm shifts the weight onto the desk's edge and clears the surface underneath, so it is worth checking the arm's own weight limit as well as the desk's. Our guide to setting up a monitor arm covers the clamp types and the load they take. The point of the sum is simple: the rating is a ceiling, and a trading setup is the kind that can reach it.
Where the screens should sit
Height is where a lot of trading desks go wrong. OSHA says the top of each screen should sit at or slightly below eye level, with the centre about 15 to 20 degrees below your horizontal line of sight, and the screen tilted back no more than 10 to 20 degrees. CCOHS agrees that each screen belongs at eye level, or a little lower if you wear corrective lenses. When you run several monitors equally, CCOHS suggests placing them so their edges meet, or in a shallow arc, all at the same height and about an arm's length away, so you turn your head rather than lean toward a screen.
A tall stack is the one case where the top screen drifts above eye level; a monitor stand or riser or an arm brings it back down. And fixing the screens only works if the desk itself is at the right height for your elbows. A sit-stand desk lets you set that for sitting and for standing. Our standing desk height guide and the desk height calculator give the numbers for your own height.
Routing the cables on a desk that moves
A multi-screen setup is a cable problem as much as a desk problem. Each screen has a power lead and a video cable; add the PC, a dock, a power supply and the peripherals, and a mass of cables is normal. On a sit-stand desk those cables move, because the top travels up and down, so anything plugged in needs enough slack to follow it without tugging on a port.
Route everything to one drop point at the back, bundle the slack with reusable ties or a sleeve, and mount a power strip to the underside of the top so it rises with the desk. A cable tray or basket fixed under the rear edge keeps the bundle off the floor. Leave the longest cable with enough length to cover the full travel of the desk, and run a few full lifts before you tidy, so you can see that nothing snags at the top of the stroke.
Matching it to a sit-stand Vival Desk
On a sit-stand Vival Desk the numbers line up like this. The top is 120 by 60 cm, which takes two monitors across the back comfortably and holds the 60 cm of depth you want for an arm's-length viewing distance. The frame is dual-motor and rated to carry up to 100 kg on top, so a multi-screen rig with arms and a tower has headroom, though it is still worth doing the weight sum rather than guessing. The height runs from 72 to 120 cm, enough to set both a sitting and a standing position for most people. The surface the arms and risers clamp to is a matte walnut-look laminate (a printed surface layer bonded onto the board) over an MDF core (medium-density fibreboard, a board pressed from wood fibre). S$289 with code VIVAL60 (list S$349)
What the published specs do not promise is a built-in cable tray or grommets (the ringed holes in the top that cables pass through), so cable routing is left to you, which is why the slack-and-strip method above matters. The one-year voluntary warranty covers the dual motors, the controller and arrival damage to any part, and it lists loading beyond the 100 kg rating as an exclusion. That makes the weight sum the one check worth getting right before you build the rest of the desk around it.