Cable management

[Daniel114]

I've always tried to keep cables tidy when building a new PC, although sometimes I'm just eager to make sure everything works alright so put it off for a while. Anyhow last night I spent a good few hours cleaning my PC and trying to sort the cable's out, howver at the end of it all (due in part to a SATA connection problem arrising) I looked at what I'd done afterwards, and in all honesty it just looked abysmal, hardly any change.

So what I was wondering is how long on average you guys spend trying to sort cables out, and if you had any useful suggestions, I'll try and post a pic when I get home, but at the moment I just seem to be pushing all the slack cables into the 5.25" rack, and occasionally getting some behind the mobo.

Cheers for the help, vague question I know

[mushky]

5 mins tops, good enough to help the airflow.

[CobraMods]

depends on the effect you are after as it will directly relate the the amount of time spent running wires.
for a totally clean look you can expect to spend upwards of an hour and a half to snake the wires behind the mobo, along edges,behind various components sometimes even cutting and extending wires so they can be totally hidden from view.
if your going for a basic air flow increase and not too worried about the visual aspects too much then the 5-10 min rule would apply.
nice little touch i do even when just improving airflow is to color match the wiring to the case interior with spray paint. that way even if you cant hide them all behind this and that they dont stick out like a sore thumb when you look in the box.

[wuyanxu]

due to my choice of case (Antec p182, with space behind mobo tray for routing cables). i spent about an hour putting inside the case after making sure it works outside the case. now, apart from fan cables and PCI-e cables, there are no visible cable.

IMHO, the case is most important, a bad case will see you spend hours without any improvement.
what case have you got?

[Ryu_ookami]

About twenty minutes- sort of sleeving ever cable in the PC as I use a spiral type cable sleeving that doesn't require the connectors to be removed then about 10 minutes cable tying them and placing them along the path I want them to follow.

[pistol_pete]

I spent a weekend cutting holes in my Antec Nine Hundred to hide the cables behind the motherboard - though much of that was just waiting for my 12V drill to recharge!

Same case, but compare the difference between the old system and the new one with the holes cut!





So really it depends on your case. If you have messy old multi-wire cables you could wrap them in spiral-wrap or cable sleeving. Use cable-ties to hold coils of slack wires.

[Daniel114]

Originally Posted by wuyanxu

what case have you got?

Same as you, Antec P182 with a Corsair 620 PSU, I can get some of the wires running behind the case but even after that, there's still SATA cables for DVD and Hot Swap, and ribbon cable for Soundcard etc

[wuyanxu]

WOW, very nice job pistol_pete.

hum.... strange...... cannot access photobucket. was going to show you my cable tiding in p182.
SATA cables can also go around the back, and do you REALLY need the sound card? i dumped a molex cable to motherboard for supporting PCIe power, because found out it's stable even without it. hot-swap? for which component?

edit: photobucket is back up now.

see i hid all of my cable on the back


and to get around 8800GTX being too long, i had to put a smaller than 120mm fan inside the drive cage, instead of the usual clipping on.


as you can see: generally no wiring will obstruct the airflow.

[Gryzor]

If it aint in the fan making a noise and the PC doesnt turn itself off its all WIN WIN!