So as promised the last couple days have been a complete rollercoaster of computing up's and downs filled to the seams with braid!
Now I already showed you my sleeving gear in my original posts but I think it's important that you know what else you will need to get through a 2-day long braiding sessions - and that is alcohol and coffee! I may be a bit biased here actually as I use this to get me through most things
I didn't take many pictures during the braiding so this isn't going to act as much of a tutorial - however I recommend the cable sleeving guide on the xtreme systems forums. It has some sound advice and loads of pictures (even pin diagrams for connectors).
However I would offer the following advice - get a good lighter which
doesn't light up with a bare flint - you want one with a button or something. I don't think I've ever put my fingers through more torture! Another thing is that people recommend using a hairdryer on coloured heatshrink as a lighter leaves black marks. I don't agree with this - I have a really top notch hairdryer (+ man points) and it had no effect on the heatshrink at all. If you use a long flame and turn the wire as you're melting it then you won't leave black marks.
Anyway without further ado - here are the pics!
Front panel controls, braid looking very orange here:
About midway through - everything sleeved except the PSU:
PSU stripped down (it's quite a task with the corsair ones!). Look at all the twists in the cables - some pins have two cables too which are tangled up in other cables... you'll know the nightmare if you ever try it yourself
Another shot showing where the wires are coming from - I cut back the stock braiding as far back as possible with a pair of scissors and then used nail-clippers to get right into it - it get's very hairy with all the plastic fibres:
After many long hours of braiding...
These huge and jumbo pieces of heatshrink really did the trick - I heatshrunk the individual wires to about 2-3cm away from the supply to keep them well away from each other when using the lighter and then cut the heatshrink long enough to cover it all and fed each wire individually through before melting:
All the mobo power:
The back of the case - was a bit of a squeeze to get the back cover on
My SSD looking cosy behind the case - managed to find a couple of screw wholes in the case to fix it on
And the front, in all it's glory!!
I think this loop here looks really cool:
So there you have it! Well actually there was a bit more to it - the computer wouldn't turn on because I had accidently mixed up a 5v pin and a ground pin on the 24-pin ATX connector
I had drawn myself a pin diagram that must have been a little bit dodgily-orientated.. the problem was caused by me mixing up where the empty pin was (no -5v on this PSU). I consider myself very VERY lucky that nothing was broken. Was a bit annoyed at myself because I removed and replaced one wire at a time in the PSU to make sure that this didn't happen but something must have went wrong along the way... always double check against a pin diagram kiddies
So all is up and running now - just awaiting my black CPU fans which I'll get hold of and braid tomorrow!
Let me know if you have any more questions about the braiding!