New rebuild, cable management still sucks

sexyhyde said:
get some cheap thin cable ties, pull cables to the outside of the drive cage and cable tie the cables to the holes on the drive cage (so the cables are between the drive cage and the side panel). this would drastically improve air flow through case. if you can use the holes at the front of the case all the better but if the cables are to short to stretch you may have to pull out a drive or two and use the ones towards the middle of the case, before replacing the drives. i'd also use a fair few cable ties on the ribbon cables to get them looking more like round ones as ribbons are notorious for wrecking air flow.
Click to expand...

This looks like the best advice, although you could try folding the IDE cables.

For the ATX power, can you run it along the side of the PSU casing and down the side of the rear fans?
 
Apart from the unholy mess of cables - what is the actual spec of the server Sub?

ie MB, CPU, RAM and NIC? PCI add in cards for your IDE drives

thanks :)

I have a similiar clapped out Athlon XP build and I'm interested in how you've got the extra drives in on that old? MB
 
With nowhere to hide the cables the best 2 things you can do is cable tie what you can so you dont have flailing cables...
...then put the side panel back o and forget about it!
 
You need to attack cable management with a little thought, and a lot of OCD.
My case also has no cable management, and it probably has a lot more cables in it than yours, but they can be made tidy.

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Try to group all cables together that are going the same way (like HD/CD power cables), then tee them off tightly into their final destination. When finished, it wants to look like an overhead view of a road, one big run of cables running from top to bottom, with sideroads branching off it towards destinations. (Components)
 
try to extend the round goldish cable by moving the 2 drives apart (take it there cd/dvd ?).

also with the main mobo power cable, it looks like there is space between the mobo and the psu,you could try putting in a couple of the stick on cable tidy holders, can't think of the name but they have a stick-on base with a circle on it, it unclips to allow cables to be inserted then locked back into place.

alos, might be worth a try to route the power connections for your drive down the other side of the case and hide the majority of the cabling from view using the hard drives.

and as already mentioned invest in a few cable ties.
 
Essexraptor said:
Apart from the unholy mess of cables - what is the actual spec of the server Sub?

ie MB, CPU, RAM and NIC? PCI add in cards for your IDE drives

thanks :)

I have a similiar clapped out Athlon XP build and I'm interested in how you've got the extra drives in on that old? MB
Click to expand...

It's an Abit NF7, XP2500+ and 1.5gb of RAM running Ubuntu something or another.

4 IDE drives running from the motherboard

PCI cards

Cheap gigabit realtek ethernet card
Firwire card - Not really using it
Promise PCI IDE card 1 IDE port used - Potential to add 3 more IDE drives
2 port SATA card (There's a 4 port card on MM going for near a fiver which I was tempted with)

The only issue with the machine is the PSU - so get yourself a decent unit. I had to shift drives around to balance the power delivery.

Anyway I'll update this thread with new pics that should surprise :)
 
Spin the hard drives 180 degrees

Ie..

Take out all the hard drives, plan which ones to insert first (work from bottom to top), connect up the IDE and power cable, then mount them in the case so the rear of the drive is at the front of the case. This way, all the cables will be neatly hidden from view

Also, that looks really loud and hot!

I'd replace them with 2x 1tb drives or something. Then sell the others to recoup some of that money. They'll be a lot quicker, and a lot quieter
 
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