High End Rounded Cables????????

[EPS Sniper]

I recently picked up a Coolermaster Grounded Cable for my two optical drives and have found it to be pretty damn nice. I really like the quality of it, and the grounding is a huge plus.

I was curious as to a few things though. Has anyone benchmarked these things to see if they INCREASE performance? I know some have benchmarked the RD3XP cables and that they increase performance.

Also, has anyone actually found a place that sells the RD3XP cables? I need a single drive cable for my hard drive, and I know that they make them. However, according to someone from Coolermaster on the Coolermaster forums, new lengths of the cables are being produced with a bunch of new products...

Anyways, any input? I've become somehow possessed by these high grade cables

 

[FLECOM]

a cable is not going to affect performance... end of story

unless its horribly constructed and you wrap it around a few AC motors your not going to notice a difference that you can actually measure.. even when testing real 80pin ribbons to rounded cables the difference were well within the margin of error...

really with the newer revsions of the IDE standard the cable isnt that big a deal anymore

 

[Kckazdude]

Anyways, any input? I've become somehow possessed by these high grade cables

The marketing gurus are happy that you are possessed.

 

[EPS Sniper]

The thing is with my crappy vantec cables, I kept burning cds that had the last few tracks garbled up. Now that I installed the new cable, I keep burning good cds. Personally I would like to replace my old ones not only because they are better quality, but also because the current ones I have are yellowing (the clear plastic on the silver mesh, that is)

 

[gee]

Some IDE cables are definitely better than others... Maxtor had to struggle hard to get ATA133 to go across a ribbon cable, and I ran into many issues doing a similar design at work. Fact is, running 33MHz TTL signaling (33MHz * 16 bit, DDR = 133MB/sec) down a foot of cable is not easy at all, and cutting up ribbon cables and cramming them into shrink wrap will cause all sorts of crosstalk problems to happen.

IMO, it's best to use a regular flat ribbon cable - if you use a fresh cable and you've got patience, you can very neatly route them. If you want nice and thin cables, buy SATA gear.

 

[EPS Sniper]

The next time I upgrade my motherboard I will be sure to check into the placement of connectors to make sure that they are vertically positioned. That way, I can look into origami. With the way my motherboard and case are situated, the only option I have now is to use rounded cables or deal with a big mess.

 

[zaz]

The high grade cables probably come off the same assembly line as the regular cables but they have a nicer covering around them....seen it before.

 

[jpmkm]

I don't consider any cable that does not meet the IDE specifications to be "high grade". The spec calls for flat ribbon cable to be used. There is no way that a rounded cable will perform any better than a spec ribbon cable. There is also no way that any cable will increase performance unless the cable used previously decreased performance in some way. If the grounding on the cable makes any bit of difference at all then there is some other problem inside your computer that needs to be taken care of. Bottom line - if you want performance, stick with a regular ribbon cable that comes with every motherboard and hard drive. If you want pretty cables then go ahead and buy pretty cables. Just don't go buying pretty shit and then complain about performance. Marketing got to you, plain and simple.

 

[gee]

The high grade cables probably come off the same assembly line as the regular cables but they have a nicer covering around them....seen it before.

Thing is, you can't just wrap ribbon cables together and expect them to behave the same as flat ones; when you do this, you're bringing active pairs in the cable close together, which are supposed to be kept separate. The characteristics change; cable impedance goes down and crosstalk goes up, and the chance of error goes up.

This is true for *every* rounded cable.