in our very popular and not at all infamous series the workshop we did an
episode where we demonstrated that cable management tucking away all your cables
in most cases pun intended has no tangible effect on performance or even
cooling so then
when we set out to do this cable management guide sponsored by our
buds over at cablemod we figured well hell if deep down it's just about
the looks let's make sure it looks as good as it can so here
is how to cable manage like a pro
the first thing we needed was a test subject so we borrowed our triple headed
vr project machine it already
looked reasonably clean from the front but as for the backside
well ivan's excuse was
i was russian
now in fairness to him though this machine has six hard drives
seven RGB fans with individual leads to
their respective light controllers and to make matters worse its older style
900d chassis has no power supply shroud
so there is a visible rat's nest down at the bottom to tame the overgrowth then
we'll need some tools we recommend a pair of side cutters a set of small and
large zip ties and some double sided tape
and also some basic cable mesh or sleeving goes a long way
next you need to visualize
remember guys to have your wiring looking its best you need to avoid any
diagonal lines and try to minimize crossings
so you can't just start tucking things away without a clear end goal in your
mind's eye in fact this is so important
that if you're having trouble i would legitimately suggest that you draw it
out in paint if you need keeping in mind of course that due to
small variances it is likely that you'll end up having to make a few tweaks as
you go next assuming that you're working on a system
that's already built begin by yanking out the larger cables completely to get
them out of the way and cleaning up the small ones with your small zip ties
you should use existing case crevices to hide these small cables and you can also
use that empty cavity behind where dvd drives used to go remember those ah
that's so that's a good spot to hide the extra length of front i o cables
on the motherboard side use memory slot lines to hide your runs and then while
you're at all of this keep in mind where your thicker runs will go
you can use those to hide your thin runs later on
planning pro tip number one leave the SATA cables
for last because the drive side connectors in particular are really
flimsy and they are surprisingly easy to accidentally break off while you're
running or tightening something else pro tip number two sometimes rotating a
fan can give its cable a cleaner run pro
tip number three label your fan connectors this makes it
easier to reconfigure your airflow and your RGB patterns once it's not obvious
anymore which cables belong to which fan
pro tip number four if you have a modular power supply
hide your unsightly power supply side modular cables in the cavity behind the
psu tip number five if you can't hide a thin
cable run some basic wire mesh makes it look a lot more professional and
flattening the run beforehand helps to avoid
snake meal mesh bulbs tip number six
replace your existing double-sided tape on things like your RGB controllers it
might still be residually sticky but it is much more likely to fall off after a
re-application than not hot glue is also
a pretty good one here if you've been following along so far
you're well on your way but you've probably run into some situations
where you have no choice but to commit a cardinal sin
sometimes your stock cables are simply too short to avoid diagonal lines ah
what will you do so one way around this is to use the
area between the motherboard and the case's motherboard tray wherever
possible this technique is also popular for making the front i o cables look
cleaner on the motherboard side just make sure you don't put anything too
bulky in there flex is not good for your
motherboard as for your graphics card you've got a couple of options here you can run the
power cables from the top down for a
little bit of sag support or you can run them from underneath for
a cleaner look we opted for the straight down method
since the extra two pci express power pins ended up looking really ugly
otherwise there is also the new option by the way
of using a vertical GPU adapter but
these are for single card setups only they are somewhat reliant on case
compatibility and the last issue our machine has more than
one GPU so a time lapse later and using all the
tips that we just gave you you can behold then the fruits of our labor our
system looks way cleaner both from the front and from the back
so thanks for watching no actually i'm just kidding this wouldn't be much of an
ultimate guide without some custom cables from cablemod would it now for
many people only frontside looks are important so cablemod extensions are a
quick easy and relatively inexpensive way to spruce up your machine's looks
you only need a few of them to make a noticeable difference to the look of
most machines for others though
extensions are about like putting a park bench on a civic and calling it a
spoiler so for them there are the pre-packaged cable mod replacement kits
which are available in a variety of colors and patterns and for pretty much
every modular power supply model under the sun we are going one step further
cable mods ultimate offering custom length and colored cables
so to get out your system the first thing you need to do is measure your run
lengths but you can't just do this any old way like don't use a string
we actually recommend using a wire so we cut a 12 gauge wire because this helps
simulate the way that the custom cables will actually bend once they're
installed we're also going to try to address the clump of pci express cables by the power
supply by calculating which cables we can run
hidden behind others it's important to
get each length of run exactly right and
make sure you're checking exactly the terminal that you'll use
because if you measure them all to the same one the end result might not align
as perfectly as you might like with our lengths in hand we dialed them
into the configurator which allows details like the number of pre-installed
combs and distance between SATA connectors and then about a week later
our pro cables with thicker wires and pre-installed combs arrived
when you're hooking these up we actually suggest pre-bending the cables into the
desired shape before you install them it helps more than you might think
then right last but not least we mentioned cable combs but you should
probably explain those cable combs can be used not only to keep your
individually sleeved wires apart but to ensure that parallel runs are
indeed parallel and they stay there
okay then so since all the cables were pre-made to length installing them was
an absolute breeze and this
is our real end result so as you can see
the front looks cleaner the clump on the bottom is minimized and
then the biggest difference is on the back especially when you look at the
before and after i mean it went from something that we'd really rather hide
to something we'd actually want to show off i mean maybe that's the next trend
in computer cases Windows on both sides oh wait they've actually been doing that
so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get
subscribed or even consider checking out our sponsors cable mod at the link below
to where you can buy their stuff also link down there is our merch store
which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should
totally join