Home AV - Keystone guide/ recomendations

[CosmicLentil]

Hey guys,

my home desk setup is truly horrible at the moment, I'm running a dual monitor arm and the cable management amongst most of the other things is driving me a bit wild,  I'm looking for some advice on Keystones as i cannot find anything useful out there.

Basically my plan is to get two wall mounted monitor arms and run all the AV cables being the wall to make it as clean as possible. I've saw various USB/HDMI/display port keystones out there, and if it works the way i want ill just have a couple hdmi, display port and usb keystones from where the arm is mounted and then down to under my desk.

 

My question is, is there any brand that i should /shouldnt use? how about mountingplates/faceplates what sort of stuff do i need?

any tips/recommendations would be appreciated!

 

EDIT: - im based in the UK so any geography specifics i should be aware of?

 

Cheers

Kieran

[Omon_Ra]

I'm assuming you can cut into the walls to fish the wires in the wall? I personally prefer using as few keystones/connections as possible. Use low-voltage retro/old-work boxes to make things easier. They look like this:

 

and then some 'nose-plates'

 

Depending on how many cables you need to run up top, you can get double-gang size work boxes/nose plates. Ideally you'd relocate a power outlet up top as well so you don't have to run power behind the wall as well for the monitors.

 

But generally any of the keystone/snap-in connectors are fine if you want to go that route. It's just one more point of failure, and for some things like 4K or HDR it can sometimes cause issues so I like just running longer cables up through the wall.

[ender23]

In addition to the above, I'd recommend running a smurf tube between the two low voltage boxes to make it easier to upgrade down the line if needed.

[Omon_Ra]

On 11/6/2023 at 1:14 PM, ender23 said:

In addition to the above, I'd recommend running a smurf tube between the two low voltage boxes to make it easier to upgrade down the line if needed.

Very true, but it depends on what's inside the wall. If there's no insulation, not really worth it; it'll be super easy to drop any new cables up/down. However if there is insulation, that could help. You just need to make sure it's a big enough diameter for all of the plugs and cables that will be inside of it. And then at that point getting the tube up there could be more trouble than it's worth. Use a fiberglass 'fishing rod' or fish tape to go from hole to hole and try to stay as close to the drywall/inside wall as you can if there is insulation. If anything, at least leaving an extra piece of wire/string behind to pull a new wire up/down will make life easier down the road.