Round IDE Cables

[gizbug]

Do they really help with cooling and moving air around in a closed case, as much as people say?

Anyone recommend a good place to purchase these?
These babies seem expensive.

 

[CubicZirconia]

Do they really help with cooling and moving air around in a closed case

Not really. Most tests show that they don't help at all. I believe there are 2 main reason to buy round cables. First, they look cool. Second, they reduce clutter inside the case. If all you want do is reduce clutter you can just fold over normal ide cables.

 

[corkyg]

I switched to them not because of air flow and cooling. But simply because the look nice and allow me to color code my system. Blue is Primary, red is Secondary and Yellow is FDC. They have one added advantage - they are much less susceptible to EMI because they are shielded. Expensive? That depends on what you consider expensive. I don't consider $9.95 each to be expensive.

 

[dade305]

Newegg.com is a good place to purchase from.

I recently purchased some Vantec round ide cables at $9.00 each + shipping.

 

[A2KLAU]

I personally don't have one of these yet, but I am thinking of getting one soon. I have heard somehwer that because the wires are "bundled" together as they are, doesn't that mean that there can be an essence of interferance from the neighbouring wires?! It all sounds good, but I'm just worried about the interference factor.. As said above they are shielded.. but has anyone had any bad experiences?! if they are that good I'm diving in to get them.

Albert.

 

[CubicZirconia]

but has anyone had any bad experiences?!

Personally, all my rounded cables have worked perfectly. Most people who have had problems normally had them with early rounded cables. If you get any relatively new cables you should be fine.

 

[bliab]

I find that the way newegg.com charges shipping makes small items like cables not worth it.. Their least expensive rounded cables are $6 plus $6 shipping. SVC seems to have cheap cables with lots of colors and reasonable shipping, but doen't seem to have many name brand offerings..
I ordered two rounded ATA, a rounded floppy and a vantec quiet fan for less than $25 shipped last week.

 

[A2KLAU]

So its only the older cables that carried the problems, and the newer cables now out are all good and won't have any problems right?!

Cheers for the feed back.

Albert.

 

[SolrFlare24]

Yeah they will work just fine if you buy the newer ones. Other good places to check are pcmods.com , directron.com, googlegear.com, and mwave.com. All offer good selections of rounded cables, and since they aren't that expensive and won't break, shipping shouldn't be much of a concern.

As to them helping airflow...well yes and no. If you have a regular IDE cable that sits right in front of a fan then heck yeah. Like my Antec 10X0 case has a fan in the lowest internal 3 1/2 bay for cooling the HDs. With a regular IDE cable, the whole compartment is just about completely blocked off so it cuts off the airflow into the case itself. They also improve your airflow if your case is really cluttered. If you have a smaller case with a ton of IDE cables cluttered around inside then yeah you improve airflow with rounded ones. On your larger cases it really doesn't matter one way or the other.

The biggest benefits if you have an average size case are

1) A lot less clutter

2) EMI shielding(modern rounded cabels have aluminum or silver shielding) which isn't that big a factor but its a small boost.

I really recommend rounded IDE cables myself as they are not that expensive and do kill the clutter. The only place a rounded IDE cable hurts is if you only have a very tiny space to fit your cable between(like a smaller case with say a voodoo 5 or GF4) in that case you may be better with the flat regular IDE cable. On a side note, Coolermaster is about to release(if not out already) a new model rounded cable that has transparent plastic on it. Thats no biggy but the cool part is they really tightly bound the whole cable so that its a bit smaller in thickness than your usual rounded IDE cable so it is even more managable.