Cable Management Ideas

[daniel1113]

Hey guys,

Over the past week, I have been trying to clean up the cables inside my computer. I spent a lot of time hiding extra wires and routing cables behind the motherboard tray. The inside of my case already looks much better (I wish I had a before picture to show you); however, I would like to do more. Since I have so many drives (4 hard drives, 2 DVD/CD, 1 floppy, 7 Total) I know I am going to have to deal with some wire clutter, but surely there has got to be a way for me to hide some more cables.

I am already planning on sleeving my power supply in black, and was considering switching my four hard drives to SATA rather than PATA. That way I would only have 2 huge IDE cables rather than 4. I would like to find a way to further hide the remaining cables, including the nasty gray ribbon cable that connects my game port to my sound card, the 12v P4 power plug, and the huge main motherboard power cable.

Please take a look at the following pictures of my case (Coolermaster ATC-111) and post any other suggestions you may have. Thanks!

Inside Case Picture 1
Inside Case Picture 2

 

[sugarkang]

nothing you can do about that game port.

as far as all those ide cables....

have you seen the picture of the antec slk3700BQE at silentpcreview?
since the drives are sidemounted, you could mount the drives in reverse, so the drive cables are *behind* the drives.

PICTURE

 

[Ness]

In all honesty, I think you would be better off getting rid of the rounded cables. While they look really cool, it's harder to hide the slack. With flat cables you can tuck the spare safely in between the drives.

Not the mention the extra material around the ends of the rounded cables makes for a real pain in the ass sometimes.


You could also sleeve the cables of your PSU.

 

[jessieqwert]

Ahh SP94, Good Choice

My easiest idea would be to alternate drives so that the cables are more stretched out.
This would stretch them more, rather than have them flexed and thus pushing out in to the case.

 

[Overkast]

Bluetooth

 

[EeyoreX]

Some cable origami (a la Voodoo PC) for the game port cable can be done. Won't hide it, but can route it around some. The same can be said with ribbon cables for your IDE drives, if you wanted to go that route. I got rounded cables that were short enough so that there was very little slack and didn't "buldge" too much. And tucked the buldges I did have between drives. It hasn't affected either my data or my temps. so it's all good.

\Dan

 

[daniel1113]

Originally posted by: jessieqwert
Ahh SP94, Good Choice

My easiest idea would be to alternate drives so that the cables are more stretched out.
This would stretch them more, rather than have them flexed and thus pushing out in to the case.

Actually, it's an SLK-900a

Alternating the cables is a good idea. I will try that when I get home and see if it helps any. I may also try using the old ribbon cables again... they are definitely easier to bend through the case, so maybe they will help. Thanks for the good ideas, and keep 'em comin'