Is that guy really reviewing cables
again? Will he be slamming them for being snake oil? Will he be pretending
they give him special powers? Will he be climbing over the roof of his garage?
No, none of those things today. It's just a straightup video on some
straightup replacement modular cables for your PC power supply. The C series
from Cable Mod.
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So, my initial discussion with the Cable Mod guys was pretty straightforward.
They asked if I'd review their cables. I said, "Yeah, sure. They look
interesting." They asked what color I'd like, and I said, "All of them." And
they were like, "What?" And so I repeated myself, I would like all of
them. And they were like, look, we're not going to we're not sending you enough to equip you and all your friends
with a set of cables. I mean, someone has to actually buy these things at some
point. And I was like, no, I I plan to hoard them all for myself. Then there
was kind of silence on the other end of the phone line for a little while, followed by like, what could you
possibly need 12 different color sets of cables for? And while I argued valiantly
for the necessity of having them all on hand just in case I was in the mood to
change my color scheme at some point in the future, it was in vain. They did
send me all of the colors to show you guys, but I only got full sets of a few
of them and just one of each of the rest. So, what in the devil are these
then? Well, it's been fashionable for quite some time. And we have a local
Vancouver gentleman who goes by the name of Charles to mostly thank for the
popularization of this to individually sleeve each wire in a 24 pin, 8 pin, six
pin, or however many pin cable for aesthetics. And it's a purely aesthetic
play, by the way, since it actually makes the wires bulkier from an airflow
perspective compared to having them on their own or bundling them together with
a single sleeve. The problem with individual sleeving is that it's
extremely expensive and timeconuming to
source the quality materials and tools that you need to do it than actually do
it. Seriously, it takes a long time. So,
for most people who aren't going to make custom cables and just want to sleeve
the standard ones that would normally be included with their power supply, an
aftermarket prepackaged solution is a nice little timesaver. Although, this
isn't the first such product. NZXT's approach early on in this trend was to
offer extensions for any power supply
cable. These had the benefit of excellent compatibility, but the
drawback of additional resistance on every wire, and they required the user
to find somewhere to tuck away and hide the rest of what was otherwise already a
fulllength cable. Corsair actually provides pre-individually sleeved cable
kits for some of their fully modular power supplies, but the sleing they use
isn't that great and it's only available in a few different colors. Although on
the other side of the spectrum, there are some custom shops online that you
can order made to order cables from, but not everyone is comfortable with that.
And although the selection is unlimited, they can get very expensive. So, Cable
Mods tries to bridge the gap, I guess. They use paracord type sle that they
brand as mod flex which means it's extremely flexible. It's softer and IMO
nicer looking than the traditional sleing materials. And it doesn't allow
any of the color of the wire to be seen through it. It's actually very similar
to what Silverstone uses on the cables on this power supply that I declared to
be the best I'd ever seen for modular cables a couple of years ago, but they
don't have the same cost associated with them that a custom one does. Another
nice touch actually is that they don't use any heat shrink. You know, that kind
of plastic stuff on the end of every sleeve that holds it in place. This
gives every wire an extremely clean look as it goes into the connector. Or at
least all of that is all the stuff that Cable Mod claims on their website. I
wouldn't be much of a reviewer if I didn't spend some time validating all of
this. So, I took my C series cables,
which means I had to use, of course, their AXI, HXI, or RM series power
supply, and I built myself a little system here. They do have the right pin
outs available for other popular power supplies from Corsair, EVGA, and CIC,
and apparently more colors coming, but this is what we've got for now. So, as
advertised, the cables plug into the things and make your system look
subjectively better. If I had to come up with a complaint, it would be that not
enough ponies galloped past me while I was building the system with the cable
mod cables. That would be a massive improvement. Which leads us pretty well
into the conclusion that practically writes itself. If you're into hot
rodding your PC and having it look all, you know, sweet and you don't feel like
sle yourself, something that some people are into but most find tedious and
bothersome, then cable Mod delivers the goods. enthusiast grade individually
sleeved cables. And I guess that's pretty much it. Speaking of enthusiast
grade parts, today's episode sponsor is Sapphire Technology, a brand new one
here on Linus Tech Tips. Now, obviously you've all heard of Sapphire because of
their Vaporex video cards and other products like that. In fact, those are
the ones that we used for the Autobond Hammer, their 8 gig graphics cards that
we drove our triple wide 34in monitor
thing with. But what you might not know is that they have a YouTube channel
where they host all types of content for PC enthusiasts like you and me. Their
new series that we're highlighting today is called Not From Concentrate, a PC
build/mod/art
piece series that highlights a bit of an off-the-wall build from Josh Sniffen.
They've been posting videos in the series for a few weeks now, and the finale just went up last night, so the
whole mod is available to view right now. The mod ends up being as much a
unique piece of furniture as it is a computer. And you can tell that
obviously Josh put a ton of passion into this thing. I mean, it's like got
finished wood on there. And anyway, I'm not going to describe it because you guys can go ahead and click this video
link annotation thing right here to check it out. Or you can also click the
link in the video description. And also make sure you check out the link in that
video's description because you can join
a giveaway for a Sapphire R9285 ITX
compact video card contest thing. Entries close September February 20th.
What is September? I don't even know what I'm talking about. So, make sure
that you enter before then. Guys, thanks for watching. Like this video if you liked it. Dislike it if you thought it
sucked. Leave a comment if your feelings are more complicated than all of that. As always, check the other links in the
video description where you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one. give us a monthly contribution or change your
Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code. So whenever you buy
cables or whatever else it is that you buy on Amazon, we get a small kickback.
That kind of thing helps us out a lot. Thanks again for watching and as always, don't forget to subscribe.