I'm at a crucial point of my build & would love to start sleeving the cables coming out of my PSU. A couple of questions for the modmasters here at BT: 1) because of the excess amount of external cabling, if I trim any cables so that they do not exit the PSU these will obviously need to be electrically isolated - do they need to be terminated in any way though? I'm assuming not but I don't know for certain. 2) if I start trimming cables will that affect any kind of load balancing from the PSU? Again I'm guessing not, but it is just a guess. Mucho grazias in advance
1) A bit of electrical tape over the end will be fine, or a crimp cap if you want it to look neat. 2) Some PSUs have two (or more) rails, each with a separate current limit. If you were to cut off the cables for one entire rail, you would be left with only half the maximum current capacity available.
I recently did just this. My method was to cut the wire inside the psu case and then bend over the end over on itself using a pair of pliers and then sleeve each one with heatshrink. I then grouped about five wires together and used a larger piece of heat shrink to hold the five together and then tie wrapped them out of the way. A bit belt and braces but assured there wouldn't be any shorting going on.
Very good point, thanks for the reminder. The Silencer 750 I was planning to mod has a single +12V rail, but as you say other PSUs can split the load across multiple rails. Smashing, belt and braces works perfectly for me!
Depending on how the power supply has grouped the wires on the circuit board, you might be able to get a pair of side snips close enough the circuit board that the reaming wire is too short to be of issue. If you goes this route you need to be very careful not to nick or damage any wires you wish to keep. If exposed wire stubs still concern you can then seal them off with liquid electrical tape, or hot glue.
Yeah, that is a good shout. If I was feeling particularly brave I'd desolder the wires from the board altogether, although that isn't something I have much experience of. In either case, I thought it would be a good idea to label the wires or create a trace/pin out map of the PSU board in the event I needed to mod the wiring again at a later stage.
