Gaming desks generally don’t offer to do any more for your actual gaming PC than provide a place for it to sit, but the new ThunderX3 Lab-X can help drop your gaming PC temps by “four to five degrees” according to the company.
The trick to ThunderX3‘s new best gaming desk contender’s temperature toppling trick couldn’t be simpler: it has lots of holes in it. On either side of the main metal desktop surface, you’ll find perforated metal panels that help improve airflow to the base-mounted fans of your case, in turn potentially reducing your overall system’s heat.
To really get the full benefit, ThunderX3 demonstrated how you can attach a magnetic fan to the underside of your desk to really force air up to your PC, but you’d still get some benefit from the holes alone.
We’ve already seen the benefits of using a steel gaming desktop with the excellent Secretlab Magnus Pro, and ThunderX3 amply demonstrates the point again with its clever airflow idea and magnetic fans. Plus, by providing holey sections on both sides, you can choose which side to put your PC on and still get the benefit.
In between these two sections is another of this desk’s more quirky features, which is a huge built-in glass mouse pad. Fully half the central, non-ventilated portion of the desk is given over to frosted tempered glass, which you can either use directly as your mouse surface or it can just be a hard-wearing base on which to place a conventional mouse mat. It would be interesting to see how the glass mouse skates of the Asus ROG Harpe ACE Extreme hold up on a glass mouse pad.
Elsewhere, the desk also includes an aluminum T-channel section that runs around the front, back, and sides of the desk, providing the ability to slide accessories onto the desk. Unlike the slightly more elegant Corsair Platform:6 and Platfom:4 desks, accessories for the channel just use standard nuts to engage with the T-channel, making it unclear how you tighten and secure down the devices once you’ve slid them into place.
For now, the company didn’t have a huge number of finished-looking examples of these accessories, but it did have a headphone hanger and two bent sheet metal extensions. One of these just provides some extra horizontal – though rather wobbly – surface area, while the other is folded into a convenient newspaper rack-type shape for stowing documents or whatever else you might want to tuck out the way.
Perhaps the best feature about this gaming desk, which also offers electronic sit-stand adjustment and a large desktop area, is that it’s set to cost just $499. Admittedly, the build quality seemed to me to reflect this price, with the demo units on show at Computex 2024 already showing signs of chipped paint on the metal desktop and T-channel. However, that’s still a lot of desk and features for that price.
The ThunderX3 brand comes from the same stable as Endgame Gear, Noblechairs, Ducky, and others, and it’s also showing off a couple of new gaming chairs at the world’s largest PC-centric trade show, Computex.
The ThunderX3 Core Smart is a slightly more budget version of the already excellent value ThunderX3 Core. It uses a more limited tilt mechanism, which can’t tilt back as far as the non-Smart version, and it has a lower maximum weight rating. What’s more, from a quick sit down, it appeared to offer the same excellent overall comfort as the pricier version. For a saving of $50, it could be a great option for lighter users who don’t care too much about a fully lie-flat chair.
There’s also the new Flex Pro, which is a mesh chair that offers dozens of adjustable or self-adjusting sections. For instance, the split lumbar support conforms to your spine as you lean back, while the headrest can be adjusted in and out and up and down too.
As for the armrests, we’re used to seeing so-called 4D armrests but this chair takes armrest design to another level. As well as the usual forward/back and left/right sliding and rotation options, they can flip upwards and pivot outwards, all while including removable pads that are also nice and soft. Both chairs immediately impressed me with their comfort levels, compared to the now dozens of gaming chairs I’ve reviewed or tried.
For more of the latest and greatest PC gaming tech we’ve seen at Computex so far, including the new be quiet! horizontal PC case and the clever internal glass panel vertical GPU cooler from new case manufacturer HAVN, check out our Computex news story hub.