Cable Management

Lonz

Lonz

Lonz

Associate
Joined
29 Jun 2005
Posts
1,013
Location
Newcastle
Have any of you got some good tips for cable management in your PC? I have some nice looking hardware that just look cluttered with all the wires, I've tried puting them all to one side but there's always a few that need to go scrawling across to the otherwise of the motherboard that looks ugly with a window.

Some things worth noting, I have an ASUS Star Ice HSF
Some Corsair XMS RAM (the one with the lights)
An HIS X1900XT (the one with the UV reactive fan)
To top that off, a Nice Akasa UV "black" light on the bottom to give things an extra shine. An all round decent looking insides

This is all inside my Lian-Li PC7 case with a replaced blue fan at the front and top.

I would love to have this looking in prestine condition, but a lot of wires, especially the 2 UV reactive SATA cables are sprawled across the front of the window, mainly because they are too long.

There's nowhere to hide them! I'll try get some pictures to show my predicament. Help/tips please!
 
Some cables can run behind the motherboard, some can be routed up and down the back side of the 5.25" bays. On some cases you can mount hard disks backward so as to hide power and data cables from view but on the PC-7 that places them a bit too close to the front fan.
 
Thanks, great advice, I assume its best to take both side panels off when doing that as well?
 
Will make it a lot easier with the pc7 yes :)

Remove the hdd bay and put your hdd's in the floppy bay? I did that and it cleared a lot of space.
 
Cable ties and bases to keep the cables in place.
You can also buy spiral wrap sleeving if you don't want to go over the top with cable ties.
Ribbon cable can have folds in them if you are careful.
I normally try and tuck the ribbons out through the right of the case then feed enough back to the motherboard and fold any slack cable on the right of the case.
As you have funky SATA cables you probably wont want to do this but you can coil the cables and use a cable tie to keep the coil in place to get ride of the slack, just don't bend them.
Depending on the location of the 20/24 pin ATX power cable on your motherboard, if it's on the far right of the motherboard you can clamp it down on the case backplate using a cable tie and base and also run HDD and PCIe power cables with it.
This will give you a nice straight loom and you should be able to run most power cables with them as well.
With rear case fans, I tend to anchor them bewteen the top of the motherboard and the bottom PSU and I also loom the 4 pin ATX feed for the CPU as well.
Spare / slack cables from the power supply can be tied together and tucked between the right hand side of the PSU and the case if you have the room.
Otherwise I tend to use a cable ties and bases to hold them to the underside of the top of the case.
 
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