Rounded IDE cables

[DFO]

Do you trust them? (not to hurt performance)

 

[Lint21]

I trust them. Been using them for about a year with no problems. I got mine from SVC for a song... the silver ones look foxy!

 

[Krk3561]

Are there problems with them? I used them cause they look nicer in a window. Do they hurt performance?

 

[DFO]

I've heard they can...not sure to what degree, however.

 

[J3anyus]

As long as you get machine-rounded cables and you're not using them in some super-critical situation (like storing NASA data), they're fine.

 

[Bluefront]

I just fold mine together, hold with tie-straps....helps with air flow. Never had a problem.

 

[Mem]

Been using mine for nearly a year,no problems at all,infact there`re quite a few website reviews on the subject & they found there was no difference with performance,so if you use standard spec lengths etc,you won`t have any problems.

 

[corkyg]

Absolutely trust them. They are shielded, and that makes them more EMI resistant, aside from air flow. They also look cool and make maintenance easy by color coding. Blue is IDE1, red is IDE2, and clear or yellow is FDC.

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: Bluefront
I just fold mine together, hold with tie-straps....helps with air flow. Never had a problem.

 

[HermitGuy]

I've been using the rounded Ide cables for a few months now to hook up my cd-rom, cdrw and zip drives, with no problems, or performance issues that I can see. I'm planning to buy one more for my main harddrive here shortly.

 

[zephyrprime]

If you're paranoid, get Active SMART. It lets you monitor CRC errors.

 

[Fruitcake77]

I read of rumors about a year ago, that they'd cause data corruption. Taken into account that round cables are often bought by tweakers, who overclock a lot... well, data corruption is possible, but I don't believe it's due to cables. It'd be some sort of problem between chair and keyboard.
Just couple of days ago I read a review that had done very thorough performance testing.. with 3 different cables and 2 HD's.
There was your common 45IDE cable, 45cm rounded, and 90cm rounded. 45cm round came at the top in almost every performance test they done, and it was so clear it couldn't be a statistic error.
Of course the graph was a bit misleading, and in gaming or any other heavy duty stuff, you wouldn't know any difference. But still, 45cm rounded was always ahead, followed by the 90cm rounded.

 

[grumm3t]

I also read about the data corruption thing myself.

It was pertaining to why VoodooPC didn't use rounded cables and I think it was in Maximum PC or PC Gamer.

 

[Mavrick007]

Data corruption can happen in rounded cables just as it can happen in a flat ribbon cable. It really depends on how the cable was made and the quality of workmanship involved cause there's no difference in packing all the wires inside a small cylinder than by putting it in a flat ribbon. If any of the wires has something happen to them, it can increase corruption of data. This could be found in a bad fold of your ribbon, a connector is not fully seated in the ribbon, a crimp or cut to the ribbon as well as it could be found in a rounded cable such as a wire not fully connected to the end connectors or a broken wire.

I would think that if they are in the cylinder then they are safer to outside crimping or breaking but the biggest problem would be where the wires connect to the connectors. I just bought a couple from Coolermaster and they seem to be good quality cables (one 18" and one 24"), and I'll find out just how good they are after I finish my new case build.