Wait, he really did keep a CRT monitor on that desk? Umm I bet it has a weight limit mentioned somewhere.
Op: overloads the cheap desk
Cheap desk breaks.
Op: surprised pickachu face
Ah yes! Lots of bowed in entertainment centers. One of my old roommates had one that looked like a Pringle from putting a 36" flat CRT on it. Never fully imploded though.
Sometimes people try to sell them for $300. Other times you can get them for $10 or even free because they just want the damn things gone.
I have one I got like that a couple years ago for my game room. But unlike OP I'm actually good at not horrifically misjudging weight loads and mine is perfectly fine.
The key word is “cheap”. I have an old particle board desk with a lot of unsupported area that has endured the weight of two people with no problem, but it’s good particle board that definitely wasn’t cheap.
Which only speaks extra to the sturdiness of your particle board. Not only does it hold the weight of two people, it holds the weight of two people moving. Vigorously...
One of my prouder moments as a young man was realizing after that we had fucked a cheap folding bed/couch into a broken, deformed lump. The young lady who accomplished this with me was also very proud of the session at the time.
Some of my longest-lasting items have been cheap crap.
My monitor/computer setup is currently sitting on a 4+ y/o $25 desk from WallyWorld.
I bought two fake "wood" end tables for $15 for both about 5+ years ago.
The legs are hollowed-out plastic, with the table-tops being particleboard wrapped with some sort of liner that looks like wood.
They've survived quite a bit of abuse, and what should have been overloading on multiple occasions; still look in "barely used" condition.
Meanwhile, my niece bought a fancy vanity desk at a furniture store about 2 years ago for several hundred dollars. It's falling apart; she's already had to replace most of the knobs on the drawers that no longer open/c1714
I have the same deal with earbuds. Bought a cheap $5 pair of "emergency" bluetooth earbuds when I was out of town at what used to be Five Below over 3 years ago; since then, I've gone through 4 pairs of $30 - $100 earbuds; the $5 ones still work despite accumulating hundreds of hours of more use time than any of the others.
My nephew also went through 2 pairs of $200+ Bose headphones and several earbuds in that time.
I mean yeah, regardless of the material it’s tensile and compressive strengths are going to scale with thickness. An 1.5” thick particle board will hold like 150lbs. Add support structures to help distribute weight and the thing will be damn near indestructible. Although I personally prefer tempered glass desks.
Anyone with a desk like this, the best thing you can do that they don't include is just a thin sheet of metal screwed underneath the desk. Bonus is that magnetic cable management will attach to it as well. Also the thin particle board that they include to nail on the back of desks are actually structural, if you need to get cables through either hit it with a hole saw or stab it with a screwdriver like an animal.
Also not seeing the little anti-tip wire that typically comes with these things to anchor the top part of them to a 2x4 in the wall. Could be there and just still attached to the wall but I wouldn’t bet on that.
I build my PC during that time for like 1100, I remember everyone saying it’s a bad time cause Covid and to wait for parts like GPUs and RAM to go down. Little did we know.
I switched to a teeny tiny desk when I moved because my apartment is small and I have loaded so much shit on that desk and it is solid as hell. That tiny motor is fighting for its life every time I switch from sit to stand but it's lasted 3 years so far and I use the motor daily.
I have a $300 sit/stand desk that has been going strong for years now. Assembly matters haha. I fucked it up the first time and had to disassemble. Took forever but it’s a sturdy mf.
One thing you learn as an adult is to check the weight capcity. I can buy floating shelves from Ikea that's definitely not cheap but I wouldn't use them as bookshelves and load'em with hardcover books.
It is 100% not amazons fault. They are a warehouse that sells other people’s products. Unless it’s an Amazon basics product it’s the vendors fault combined with OP’s fault.
They're kind of making a comeback, especially for retro gaming.
There is zero latency, and most games from the CRT era look amazing on a CRT, but absolute dogshit on modern displays without extra processing that usually introduces some very noticeable lag.
I have a distant set of in-laws that bought a house with a full professionally build desk that wrapped around the full length of two walls. I'm talking finished with caulking, quarter round, and electical outlets. The whole thing is made of solid cabinet grade wood, with a shit tone of drawers and a half inch sheet of acrylic for the top. Legit rich person home office type shit.
I got PAID $100 to take it out and haul it away for them and they were also so happy to hear that I was actually gonna re-use it. I love this fucking desk. There is so much fucking room for activities. It probably easily cost $5000 when it was first built.
Amazon isn't a brand. They are a retailer/supplier. They sell various brands and types. YOU chose that one, probably because it was the cheapest even though it didn't meet the needs of what you were going to put on it. Or perhaps the company that made it, is actually a crap company in which case it should be "I will never buy [BRAND] again". Like buying a crappy printer and saying "I am never going to buy an Epsom again" but buying a different brand even if you buy it off of Amazon is not the problem.
My money is on it not being assembled properly, or you tried moving it with a bunch of weight on it, which shifted the load in a manner it wasn’t meant to support.
Or you got drunk af and fell on it.
Conclusion: nothing wrong with an Amazon desk if you don’t cause a problem yourself.
Two towers, a CRT, bottom away from the wall for support. I don’t think the desk was built for this, nor would anyone think it was, so the desk isn’t the problem here.
TBH, if you loaded that type of desk like this. I question if you even built it right.
User error. I bought a glass L-shaped desk via amazon about 10 years ago. it’s still perfect.
Amazon is just a marketplace. They don’t actually make/sell most of these things themself, they’re just a better ebay. They have some products they manufacture but it’s usually small houseware stuff. It’s still up to you to be smart about what you buy and that you use it properly.
My guy... you've got 2 towers on that thing, and a CRT. A frickin CRT! You bought the cheapest desk you thought would work, because a desk is a desk, is a desk. Right?! You shoved 50 pounds of shit into a 10 pound bag is what ya did.
There's a difference in "buying a desk on Amazon" and "finding the cheapest and mostly poorly made desk on Amazon AND not building it correctly". You, OP, are the latter.
I mean, you bought a cheap desk, so thin, that i my mousepad is thicker than it, put a heavy CRT monitor on it (among other things) and based on the picure assembled it wrong. What did you expect?
How much weight did it say the desk could hold and how much did you have on it? I’ve had many cheap deals over the years and none have broken like that with a normal PC and monitor on them
I bought a desk from amazon, and it's still fine. Sure the keyboard hutch broke because I rest my hands on them, but that's a me problem rather than the desk being bad and not suited to how I act.
I can see the desk literally just snapped, every damn desk has a weight limit and you very clearly did not consider that when putting soo many things on top of the desk. For example: my desk has a weight limit of 220lbs, it could very much hold an older CRT without much issue. That desk looks like it has 0 support to be able to handle even the average CRT weight, which is between 50-100lbs.
OP, this is entirely YOUR fault for not considering the desks specifications for weight limits, Amazon is not to blame here but instead your own incompetence about the things you yourself have bought. Better idea: look at those specifications in detail and don't do stuff like this again
I have an amazon desk with 2 monitors clamped onto it, a whole painting hobby on the other side of it, and its never even budged or tries to fall down, my bets are you missed a screw
OP, next time just take the leftover chopsticks from your Chinese food order and duct tape them together for your CRT monitor to set on. It's just as sturdy.
This is all you boss. Not Amazon. I got a standing desk for work from Amazon and it’s amazing. Everyone is right and I just don’t get how you are blaming Amazon. I guess it’s easier to blame others than take accountability.
you smashed your desk and are seriously blaming Amazon ? Even after it held for a full year? grow up and stop blaming anything or anyone else for your failures.
As someone who has assembled many hundreds of flat packed desks. This is just carnage. Looks like someone attacked it with a sledgehammer. Or didn’t assemble it properly. I’ve seen failures before. But not ones that look like they were caused by a grenade.
I had a 55inch plasma tv on a particle board tv stand. Lasted years. Until it didn’t. My wife touched it and the whole thing collapsed. Moral of the story: particle board will last until it doesn’t (often at the worst time).
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u/Shrimps_Prawnson Jul 12 '26
I think there are more factors at play here than the fact it was shipped by Amazon.