Cable Sleeving Thread

[xXCrossCheckXx]

when i get back from vacation. i am gonna start working on sleeving my new psu. i bought some black & red paracord sleeving from ftw (thanks for the link smasher) i have an older coolermaster psu in my box atm.

went with red and black to match my haf 932-amd edition. when i bought it i stripped it down and painted it black instead of the plain metal look it had inside.

will start posting pics when i am done. Thanks to Interitus for the look of his case

 

[Interitus]

Thanks for the compliments guys 🙂

It's far from perfect, and it was my first attempt at sleeving. I actually ran out of heatshrink and red sleeve during the process so I had to improvise a little bit. Also ran into a few problems of course, lol.

You can't really see it in the pic, but the PCI-e pins were glued into the connector. I found this out after I had already sleeved half of the wires. Odd thing was only the ground pins were glued. If you could see close enough, half of those black wires are unsleeved, lol.

That SATA mod is one of the easiest you can do if you have a modular PSU. The connectors are dirt cheap and the way they work is super simple. If you try the SATA sleeve that way, I will give you two tips to go with:

#1) Don't try to shrink the sleeve to the wire. Just "cap" the sleeve so it doesn't fray and make the sleeve long enough to stay pinned to the connector. I did it the first time and shrinked the sleeve to the wire and it looked like crap. I used a heat gun on most of the shrink, but on the SATA section I took a lighter to the sleeve itself to melt it a bit and then just used the shrink as a cap for the sleeve. Trust me it looks better.

#2) Obviously the lengths of the wires between the drives vary from case to case. My Caselabs case is nowhere near the same distance as that K62. I've done those custom length 90* cables quite a few times myself and for friends. The easiest way to get it right is to buy your connectors, plug them into the hard drives without any wires attached, then line up the wire and mark the wire where the connections need to be made and go from there.

 

[Interitus]

Here's a closer shot of the ATX 24-pin. The Silverstone extension plug didn't like the shrink being stuffed into it all that well. You can tell by the little bit of bulge near the pin holes.

I think a lot of the bulge was caused by the crimp job on some of the wires. I didn't have a crimper on hand at the time so all I used was a pair of needle nose pliers to try and tighten up the crimping a bit. Some of the sleeving worked its way back off of the plug a bit too. The bend was pretty tight in all of the builds this extension was in, so I probably just over-tightened the sleeve a bit. I don't have any sleeve pics except for this one build, but I didn't seem to have as much trouble with others after this one. Maybe I just got better at it *shrug*

And their new home 😛

 

[Lightflash]

Yeah don't take what I said too harshly, just figured if you wanted to really sell the product, the heat shrink job would have been better. After that explanation, I now have a better understanding of why it looks that way. I still think it looks as close to MDPC as you can get it. That means a lot when I have spent a lot of money into MDPC sleeve.

 

[Smasherbasher]

I've been sleeving for a while and still sometimes botch the heat shrink part. That's definitely an art to get it just right.

 

[Interitus]

I think I'm gonna try the shrink-less method next time and see how it goes. (crimping the pin over the sleeve instead)

I've been sleeving for about a little over a year thanks to the thread at XS. There's always something you can get better at doing with sleeving it seems lol.

 

[Smasherbasher]

Latest contraption we've created. This used our Ubersleeve service with a custom laser cut acrylic dragon

 

[lehtv]

Kinda like me? :biggrin:

Please just go away. Your Fractal R3 looks so much better than mine with those black cable sleeves 😱

 

[Epsilon-Zero]

I havent done sleeving but I been looking to get into it.

What size sleeving do you use ? 1/8 for ATX and PCIe? Also what size shrink?

 

[aigomorla]

how funny i was going to ask someone to make one...

lol...

anyhow lets see your masterpieces guys!

Lets see those cobra braids!! a well sleeved cable is :O

But the brain power... meaning u need to switch onto Zombie mode.... is something im not fond of... especially on a 24 pin power plug!

 

[TheStu]

What I really want to do is single braid my cables, but somehow get them to get into the correct shape. So for the 24 pin, a 2*12, that way it can save some space

 

[XLNC]

Please just go away. Your Fractal R3 looks so much better than mine with those black cable sleeves 😱

Haha, thanks! I was kind of second guessing myself if I should've went with the white sleeved cables instead to match the white fans and hard drive cages. That would have been a good look also I think.

However, I'm glad the Asus P8P67 Pro MB came with all black SATA cables, they definitely blend into the case. That, and from the angle I took the photo, the graphics card covers some of the SATA cables anyway. Hance, the cleaner than it actually is look.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Sometime this weekend I'll post some pics of my current setup.

However, I really want to go all out next time and buy a case, mobo, graphics, etc all with a color scheme. Then get the stuff to match.

 

[aigomorla]

What I really want to do is single braid my cables, but somehow get them to get into the correct shape. So for the 24 pin, a 2*12, that way it can save some space

u can buy these for a resonable price:

http://www.performance-pcs.com/catal...ath=34_804_887

The ones i linked are the premium... cobra single braided cables...

But those of us who do not have a Zombie Mode On switch.... i seriously recomend u pay for the cable itself and not sleeve..

Im not kidding about needing a zombie mode on switch to do these guys perfectly.

 

[TheStu]

u can buy these for a resonable price:

http://www.performance-pcs.com/catal...ath=34_804_887

The ones i linked are the premium... cobra single braided cables...

But those of us who do not have a Zombie Mode On switch.... i seriously recomend u pay for the cable itself and not sleeve..

Im not kidding about needing a zombie mode on switch to do these guys perfectly.

What I was saying was I am trying to find a way to make it stay in its place so that even at bends and corners it stays like this;

OOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOO

Instead of it flattening out or bunching up. Almost like a flat IDE ribbon cable of yore, but double stacked. I would also consider getting a 90 degree ATX connector for the motherboard, but am wary of soldering something like that.