Personal Rig Update 2012 Part 6 - Cable Sleeving Showcase & Guide Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
3,509 words · ~17 min read
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one of the most timec consuming parts of a new build can be sleeving and it's
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particularly timec consuming if your cat's constantly getting in the way
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because they love they love this stuff
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see very bothersome so let's have a look at some of the supplies needed some of
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the decisions that I had to make uh with respect to how I want to he get
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down to how I want to go about this uh right now there's sort of two main ways
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to sleeve cables there's this way which is you do your heat shrink you do your
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zip tie at the end and then you have the wires exposed at the end and then the
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other way that uh sort of the more Enthusiast guys are going about uh this
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is pretty in fashion these days is the individually sleeved wires uh which is
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both a lot of work but uh both a lot of work and a lot of good looks so you just
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got to decide whether you want to do that you can buy these preone extensions
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but extensions have a have some ill effects such as uh you lose a little bit
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of uh efficiency in the connectors and
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you lose a little bit of efficiency in the longer cables so and then also okay
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like the last ill effect is that now your cable is longer so you have the
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original cable which looks something like this here we go the original cable
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which looks something like this which is now even longer so you have to Bunch up
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that extra somewhere so it becomes a little bit harder to hide so those are
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sort of the pros and cons of using these they look good though they're not a lot
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of work and they're not very expensive compared to doing it yourself um I
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decided just because I'm lazy and I had
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this particular sleeving lying around and the matching heat shrink tubing so
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sleeving heat shrink tubing scissors tape marker razor blade something to
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Mark the lengths for your heat shrink um ATX so this is for 24 pins here I'm just
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going to see if I can get to focus so you guys can see what this tool looks
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like 24 pins six pins and eight pins and
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then this guy is for Mo X's female and male on the two respective sides and
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freaking cats here again go away okay um
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so the route I decided to go is actually slightly different I have some
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challenges that I'm probably going to face here because one of them is that I
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have more than 24 pins on the side of the power supply and 24 pins here so I
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haven't stripped the sleeving off of it yet I don't know exactly what they're
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doing but you can see that some of these have uh here like this one for example
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have two pins going into one motherboard
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pin so I'm going to have to figure out where exactly they're coming from because what I'm going to be doing
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because I'm not quite willing to put the work in for individually sleeved but I
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don't I don't like having the uh exposed
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bits at the end is I'm using a slightly thicker sleeving and I am doing two
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wires per cable sleeve so right now you
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can see I've got got my modular here we go my modular 6+ 2
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where's the two H sorry I can hardly reach with my CH chest tripod on here so
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I've got my modular 6 plus2 and I've done two
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wires Focus please yep so two wires per
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sleeve which means that even if I bend it like this you can't see much of the
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actual wire at all even if the wire color is is yellow see I bend this all
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that way so you can only see about that much of it but what I'll probably do
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when I'm routing the cables out of the video card itself so I'll have it going
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in like this so I'll have a nice loose curve on it so that you can't really see
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it uh too much um so this guide will be
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more of a lazy man's way of doing it if you want the OCD way to do this um and I
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mean OCD in like the kindest most respectful possible sense because it
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really does get fantastic results you should check out this thread on hard
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form and there we go 159 now
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965 and this is by Ka master and he
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basically shows you guys how to do it sort of by the book and end up with the
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best possible results my way is going to be fairly straightforward compared to
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that so let's get started actually one more side note before we get started
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sleeving of course isn't only useful for the cables on your power supply um in
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this case these are some custom fabricated things that I did uh so these
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are just extension cables for one fan
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power connector to dual fan power connectors and I did some sort of messy
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soldering and taping and isolating or
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insulating rather isolating uh insulating here and then I can take the
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whole thing zip tie it heat shrink it and then it sort of hides it and makes
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it not look quite as ugly so that's one thing you can use it for uh other cables
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as well so I'm haven't decided how I'm going to go about this but what I'm
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probably going to do is uh butcher these four adapters so I have four of these
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Molex to dual SA with black cable adapters I'm going to hack them apart
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and then I'm going to use these to wire up my drives on the back of the
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motherboard tray when I'm done here uh just because I'm having a heck of a Time
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tracking down the uh any kind of part number that I can use to fabricate these
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myself so I'm just going to play the pck
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It Up game uh so yeah so we're going to do the eight pin connector so this is
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the motherboard connector CPU and uh go step by step here on that
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one step one is to remove the existing
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sleeving you can use either a razor blade or scissors for this depending on
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how um how tightly how tightly packed
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the wires are in there so you want to be careful if you're using a razor blade
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not to accidentally cut any of the wires because remaking these cables is a heck
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of a lot more work than sleeving them which is already more work than most
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people are willing to put into their PCS so you just want to double check make
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sure you didn't cut anything it's good this is just glue uh residue left over
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from the adhesive heat shrink that was used on this cable before so uh be
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careful when you're cutting up the existing uh braided sleeving because if
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you cut it uh if you cross cut it then what you'll do is you'll make a real
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mess like if you cut across an area that you've already cut because little tiny
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bits of this plastic will get all over the place and make just just a a
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horrifying mess and if you're the kind of person who cleans your own house as
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opposed to has your mom doing it for you then that'll be an issue that'll be a
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factor believe me I know the demographics of my YouTube channel I
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know most of you are young although some of you aren't do you know that it's 96% male
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who watch this channel go figure right
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guys so I'm just I'll remove this other end off for this next part an optional
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step would be numbering the pins before you start taking them out but uh in a
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lot of cases it doesn't even really matter because as long as you follow a
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schematic for whatever connector you happen to be putting back together um
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then yeah it doesn't really make a difference as long as the voltages are
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right so here we go actually although although bearing that in mind on the 24
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pin I'm probably going to go ahead and number them especially for the ones
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where there are two wires going into one connector so for some reason XFX or most
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C Sonic rather has seen fit to do it that way uh so I'm going to to go ahead
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and stick with their way just for peace of mind so there you go and then the
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next thing we do here is we use this tool use this tool and not any other
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tool don't use the one that looks like this it's round but uh has like two
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prongs on the end because you're probably pretty much wasting your time
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although I'm not going to do a separate guide I will show you guys how the Molex removal tool or like the peripheral
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removal tool works you put this in here there's different sides for female and
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male and then what you're doing is I'm going to see if I can get the camera
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Focus yep there you go so you are compressing these two pins on either
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side and don't eat the sleeving
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cat you're compressing these two pins on either side so that what happens is once
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you cover them you can pull them out of the housing right here so you just go
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like that and then you pull out the wire I can't really do it cuz the sleeving is
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in the way but you guys catch my drift so this one works much the same way
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except that these are much more finicky um problematic connectors so you got to
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make sure that when you're looking at the safety lat these are sort of side to
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side the pins go in the sides this way not like sides this way cuz that's where
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the little the little pins are and then
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just got to get it just
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right there we go make sure you're down the outside okay and then what I do is I
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usually use my palm to apply some pressure to the to this in here making
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sure not to apply any sideways pressure because these pins can break off so I'm
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applying pressure here then I take the cable the wire I apply pressure in
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towards the uh the removal tool then I
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give it a little bit of a wiggle to loosen the pins make sure that they're both caught and then
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pull out so there you go tools extracted
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and you guys can see here now uh the little tiny pins that is very important
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hold on just see if I can get that twisted for you so you can see the little tiny pins on either side that
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it's important not to ruin and you never want to force it when you're doing this
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guys because if you force it what can happen is you can accidentally bend the
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pins completely or the little little Clips the little hooks completely
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backwards and if you do that then uh you
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basically have to cut this off um buy some of these pins crimp it on Fab
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fabricate fabricate a completely new connector so I try not to do that it's a
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real it's a real bear to deal with so there you go it takes about that long once you have some practice and and then
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the next step for the next step I take whatever cables I'm going to be running
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through the sleeving so I've now removed all of the ends here and then I just put
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a little bit of tape on them like painters green tape is what I'm using
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right now just cuz it comes off really easily so this just keeps it from
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Catching when I run it through the sleeving that I'm going to be running it
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through so if you have a whole group of wires that you're doing then you'll
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obviously run those through if you're doing individual wires then you'll
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obviously be doing these on one at a time but I'm doing two wires at a time
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so you just kind of go like this until you get to the other end where I haven't
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removed the connector because I don't really need to personally I find it kind
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of tricky to measure these out before I put them on so I just go to the end cut
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them uh you'll need oh that was one of the things I didn't mention before
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you'll need a lighter or I use a little torch uh
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to just keep the ends from fraying so you just give it a little little bit of
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heat not a ton you don't want them to start melting too bad but just enough to
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keep them from completely coming apart so now I have put the sing on and sizing
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it is a little bit tricky so for the heat shrink what you want to do is you
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take your your mark whatever it happens to be in my case it's a q connector and
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then you line it up make a little Mark
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use a pair of sharp scissors to cut right on the
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mark there are ways to do this more accurately than what I'm doing but like
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I said mine is the quick and dirty guide
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and then you put that on there making
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sure that you don't accidentally Bend back any of the strands while you're doing this cuz you'll un unbraid it and
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make a mess so go ahead put that down to the end now lots of different ways to
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terminate these um so what I used to usually do is I'd use a bigger heat
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shrink and I'd put a zip tie under it to make sure that it wouldn't move uh but
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that was usually when I was trying to fit the the sleeving really really tight
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and have it be as compressed as possible
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because the more here so the more tight it is the more opaque it is and the more
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loose it is the more you can see through it you guys can see my finger so I was usually trying to go for that whereas
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I'm using a higher quality braided sleeving this time so what I'm going to be doing is going for a more loose fit
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so you guys can see my uh connector that I'm already finished so this guy right
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here and at the power supply ends I'm not really as worried about how tidy it
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is so I'm leaving a little bit of extra uh extra braided sleeving outside of the
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heat shrink and what that means is that even if the heat shrink accidentally moves a little bit uh it won't actually
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come out completely which is very very pretty much impossible to fix whereas on
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the other end I've gone for the pretty
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tidy approach okay so where was I here
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right so you want to get it kind of almost to the end there and
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then yeah I guess you can pretty much heat shink it now so I use a torch for
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this it's better to use a a heat gun with like a fairly low setting but you
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just kind of give it a little bit of heat try not to melt the connector or
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especially try not to melt the uh the braided sleeving because that's really
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really bad then you basically just wasted that piece because it'll be too
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short for anything else so once that's done you go ahead make sure the
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orientation of the wires within the sleeving stays correct okay and then you
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come back to the other end here and what I usually do is sort of approximately
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Mark I can feel where the pin ends and it's going to be a little bit under
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there and then I just kind of burn through it get
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the get the pins out take off my masking
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tape just kind of cut that off there
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like I said this totally the lazy way I'm not doing it by the book but I
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showed you guys how to do it by the book as well basically follow that guide by
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someone more skilled and more patient than me and uh then what I do is I let
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the I loosen up the the sleeving a
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little bit just because I'm not going for like
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a super tight fit I just don't want it to move and then that gives me some idea
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of where I stand so now I can see that I have to cut away just a tiny bit more
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make sure these two wires are are the same here oh oh okay that's interesting
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actually I might not need to cut away much more at all don't want it to be too tight yeah
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just a little bit more so what I'll do is I'll quickly burn it and then while
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it's still hot just so that I don't end up with like Globs at the end burn it
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mush it just to get rid of a little bit more I don't like cutting it with the
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scissors at this point because if you cut a little bit too much then what'll
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happen is you will be
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stuck sorry let me just cut that bit off you'll be stuck because uh you'll then
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have to burn it a little bit and then once you burn it a little bit after
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you've cut it a bit too much then you can end up with like you know a big um
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mess of like globby bits at the end which you then have to cut off and then
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all of a sudden you've gone too far and
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that's problematic so I'm just kind of
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trimming this back keeping on doing this being sure not to you know burn away the
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uh this uh the jacket on the
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wires mush mush mush okay yeah should be
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good okay so now what we do is and this
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is critical this is a very important step make sure you put on your other
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piece of heat shrink
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wrap Mark and
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cut okay so I put that
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on cuz if you forget to do this and you reattach the connector then you have to
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take them off again and that sucks so
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once youve put on your heat
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shrink Chuck your cat out of the way
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and then you find the connector which I seem to have misplaced you check either another
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connector you check a schematic online or you label them in the first place so
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here I got my two CPU connectors so it looks like black ones go at the top
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which ones are these so I'm doing these to correspond pretty much directly so
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I'm going to take this and I'm going to turn it around and I'm going to go okay
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well then these ones go
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right about here making sure the orientation of the
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wires is correct before I try to put them in clip
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and clip and then I make sure my heat
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shrink tubing completely covers the sleeving this time make sure it's not
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too loose or too tight Y and then I go
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ahead and give it the old
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heat really careful with the heat if you guys are using an open flame for this
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part because it's very easy to accidentally melt this and then it'll start to fray and then you made a real
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mess with everything so there you go I have now sleeved my two wires that is
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pretty much how to do cable sleeving I don't know if I'm missing anything in
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particular so thank you for checking out my little guide and I'm sorry it was