Cable Management

djfunz

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 2, 2007
Messages
161
Finally tweaking my rig to make it "look" good. Im picking up some cold cathodes and would love to gain a better understanding of how to attain optimum cable management. I have a kandalf chassis and this thing has a boat load of space. Right now the wires are all over the place! The power supply came with some good sleeves but thats about it. Are there certain wire sleeving or ties that look the best? Basically i really don't know where to begin so any ideas or links to assist would be vary helpful. Thanx.
 
bottom line is: try to get everything out of sight

Unused powercables can be tucked above the psu or top 5.25" bay or behind the mobotray.
Other cables can be routed under the mobo, along side the mobo
you can ziptie cables next to drive cages, or in a small bundle and hide them

Basicly I first layout my cables before I even mount the mobo
I place the board in the case and then mark with a pencil where what cable needs to be
These days I go under the board a lot but not to much (need some ventilation)

But it takes practise to get it right
 
Cable Management, is actually...fun. At least I enjoy it.

There are a few things I think about before starting, and that is, what wires do I *want* showing, what wires can I *not* avoid showing, and what wires *can* I hide.

The first and second point are very similar, but it is still something that goes through my head. After that, Its all about simply looking at your case and determining the shortest, and most elegant path to your devices. Many times you can simply run the cables behind the mobo tray (that is the other side of the case) and then bring your cables back around and just have them connect to the devices.

In some cases, say if you have a running beam across your case (typically said beam is one that runs directly below your PSU lengthwise), you can route cables on and behind it, the zip tie them down. A note on that as well, please use the same color zip tie, or one similar to your case color. Its so sad seeing an all black case with white/pink/blue zip ties. Yuck.

Really, its all about planning, where are you going to place things, whats the shortest route to it. You won't get it perfect the first time. I know when I started out, my first few machines I cabled where terrible by standards here on these forums but with each try I learned and determined a better way to do it.

Some little things that can help improve your cable management:

Turn your hard drives around. That way you can route your cables on the front panel side of the case and if you were to look inside your cage you wouldn't see anything at all with regards to HD cabling.

Run as much cable as you can behind the tray, and with that, make sure to put as much loose cable behind the tray. You want as little cable in the cage as possible.

Try, Try and Try? If you are working on it, and then suddenly you determine a better route, unplug it and start again.

Best of luck to ya mate.
 
in all honesty routing cables is the most fun part of a build for me. i take pride in a good rout. in some cases i have spent up to 10 hours just routing, all to see a better was in the end and then rip it out to start over again.

zip ties are your best friend, so get used to them. all points above are great advise and when you are comfortable in you routing you can get adventurous. in many instances good planing will have great results but when it comes to the "what can i not hide" i rewire.

rewiring takes a whole new set of plans. this is when you can start eliminating stuff you dont need. now you are able to look for parts and wires near each other and wire them together so that you have as few leads in your cases to manage as possible.

for exaple:

P5160144.jpg


P5190147.jpg

here i needed to power and control three fan. the cpu fan was easy because there is a 3pin fan connector nearby and the fan i used was also three pin. a simple braid and ziptie to take up slack was all i needed. when it came to the case fans i was not willing to have two wires run the lenght of my case so that i could plug the molex's into the psu. i decided wiring the both fans to a three pin fan connector was a much beter solution.

P4290123.jpg

here you can see how i control the fans. the leads were run along the perimeter of the mobo, under my radeon, tied off and slack was tied and hidden behind my sound card. 12v cpu connector is also under my radeon.

P1010119.jpg


P1010116.jpg

this show the wiring mess behind tray. same stuff: fans wired together, pump on its own, optical and fdd wired together, videocard on it own and sata piggy back.
 
I just spent 14 Hours on Sunday creating my new build (gear in Sig).
I could have had everything done in about 2 Hours Tops but I took the extra time I needed to plan things out, find better placements for wires and to hide as much as I could. Also changing items out of the case to improve cooling or looks.

I have a CM Stacker 801, and while it's a big, big case, there are not a lot of places to hide things. I had to give up my cross flow fan so that I could route the wires better. In the end the trade off was the right one to make! I also ran into some problems during the build. My Scythe Ninja fit perfectly, until I tried to mount the fan on it. The HSF was hitting my Ram, so I had to come up with a new Idea. I eneded up taking the Ninja off the CPU so that I could replace the 120mm fan at the back with a 104 CFM Panaflo. The more powerful fan now acts as the HSF.

When I was doing stress testing I saw that the ambient temps in the case and on the chipset were way too high for my liking. I had to come up with a way of pushing more air towards the Ninja so that it would also cool the MB and MOSFETS. I did a little moding and mounted a fan hanging off the edge of the front cage, aiming at the Ninja cooler. I also took this time to move my CCFLs around a bit to give a better effect in the case. Also allowing me to better hide some of the wires that I wasn't able to hide before.

Wire Management and tring to get the case as neat as possible is just as much fun as starting it up for the first time and playing that new game!
 
I just spent 14 Hours on Sunday creating my new build (gear in Sig).
I could have had everything done in about 2 Hours Tops but I took the extra time I needed to plan things out, find better placements for wires and to hide as much as I could. Also changing items out of the case to improve cooling or looks.

Doing the wiring right requires at least 14 hours and a 12 pack of beer. :D
 
Doing the wiring right requires at least 14 hours and a 12 pack of beer. :D
I'm sure you were being sarcastic, but mine took me less than 2 hours from looking at the case to starting the wiring. Granted, I'm still waiting on my mobo to get back from being RMAed but thats a whole other topic :D
 
Nice!! Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I like the ziptie and brading ideas. The olny major complication i might run into is the fact that this chassis does not have a mobo tray. the right side panel does look like it comes off so i should be able to emulate what tangent inc. has done. i'll post some pics on monday to show the jungle that exists now. sounds like i need a weekend for this project.
 
Just to give you an idea on some of the things you can do with a case to hide wires, check out mine:

P5180022.jpg


P5180021.jpg




Obviously, the motherboard is not hooked up just yet, but you get the idea of what it will look like when its installed.
 
looping the big stuff in your drive cages is typical for obvious reasons... it works well. i do like your placement of the usb and sound connectors. im guessing they will be behind the mobo and stick out just under the header.
 
looping the big stuff in your drive cages is typical for obvious reasons... it works well. i do like your placement of the usb and sound connectors. im guessing they will be behind the mobo and stick out just under the header.

Yup. Sure will. They come out and literally an inch is visible.

Below is an older setup, but you get the idea on the ones that are at the bottom.

P4180005.jpg
 
Wired up the machine in my signature a few days ago and it took... probably 5, 6 hours. But I was careful with it, and the PSU relocated to the bottom meant much of that time was spent:
1. taking cards out
2. trying to route the 8 pin motherboard aux power connected a different way
3. swearing because it doesn't work
4. putting cards back in
5. pulling the PSU and reorienting it (ended up upside down)
6. trying with cards in
7. pulling cards out
8. wash rinse repeat

It was hell, but I'm happy with how it turned out. I'll post pics later maybe.
 
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