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Wire Situation

nboy22

nboy22

Diamond Member
picture is here

Anyone think I should improve this somehow? I've been working on it in the past few days. So far system temps are around 30 C and lower occasionally, then I got a new heatsink and fan, that lowered my cpu about 20 C, so now that is around 46 C and sometimes lower. Do these temps look decent? The wires really have made a difference cleaning them up.
 
I see the motherboard power is in the same place as the NF7. It baffles me how the placement on a board can be so well thought out, then so easily negated by plopping that thing down right next to the cpu socket so the cable blocks both rear exhaust and intake by the hs fan.

Enough ranting. I think it looks good, though if your wires are long enough you may want to align them on the bottom of the case, unless you have a side intake in which case the harddrives blocking the front 120 doesn't matter that much.
 
If there's space between the "shoulder" of the I/O shield and the rear exhaust fans, I'd suggest routing your ATX cable like this, with the cable tucked between the "shoulder" and the fans and then swinging out to meet the connector. That's how I did my 8RDA+ in my Antec case and it looked very elegant, actually.

I hate to say it, but if you used a flat IDE cable for those bottom two hard drives, you'd have a much neater cable situation than with the rounded Cobra cables there. The flat cables can be folded and can hug flat surfaces nicely. Ask Ralfhutter for a picture of his case's interior if you want to see some nice cable-folding goin' on 😀

Anyway, it is functionally fine as-is, so those recommendations are mainly for better visual appearance. Hope that's some help 🙂
 
are you going for good air flow, clean looks, or a combo of both?

for looks, I'd recomend sleaving all the PSU wires (duct tape works great and comes in several colors). Also, zip ties are going to give you a much cleaner look than twist ties.
 
Not sure what you have done exactly, so ill throw in my 2 pennies:

MechBgon's idea of the "shoulder etc" is great. I can manage that on my NFS-7 ver 2 and Antec TrueBlue 480.

Also, hide power cables you dont use above the psu and around the top fan and above your top optical drive. I use electrical tape to keep the extra power cables fixed to the ceiling so they dont interfere with the 80mm top fan.

unscrew your right most motherboard screw and slip in the power cables for your HDD underneat the power supply. Obviously, do this if the power cable is long enough so that you can have the power cable sneak out from below your ram and plug into your hdd, and then sneak straight down hugging the side of the board to your other hdds. You can use the ATA cables to "force" your power cables to go directly to the mobo tray, and then re direct it as you need. Then screw back your mobo. (Sorry if i confused you)


Also, not sure if your round cables will allow this but: Try to tuck them to the inside of your case next to your hdds, rather than in front of your mobo.
 
viivo: I don't think the wires are long enough to rest at the bottom of the case, They already are pretty tight with me routing all the cords through a little opening under the psu and routing them around the back wall where the mobo sits. Those round cables are kinda annoying, I'll have to keep thinking about those or try traditional ATA cables.

mechBgon: Good idea with the mobo power cords, I'll have to try and see if that will fit to the shoulder like that.

loki8481: I'm going for mostly airflow, but looks is always a positive as well. I'll probably be picking up some zip ties tommorow at the store.

Tiamat: Do you mean tucking the power cables physically UNDER the mobo? or just to the side of it?

Thanks for all the help and suggestions guys, I really appreciate them 🙂
 
OK... now after messing around with it for about an hour, taking out probably 20 twisty ties that I didn't need, here is the result. CLICK HERE

I'm pretty pleased with the way it looks, it's very clean compared to way back when, when I just had a strew of wires everywhere.

I took the psu out, took out all the wires out of the back of the case, then put two wires in between the mobo and the mobo wall, it was pretty tedious work because I had to unscrew pretty much the whole mobo. After I got those two wires satisfactory, I took my other wires, re-organized them and straightened them out again, then I re-routed them through the back of the psu, behind the mobo wall, Just like before. This is by far the cleanest my case has every been.
 
Originally posted by: nboy22
OK... now after messing around with it for about an hour, taking out probably 20 twisty ties that I didn't need, here is the result. CLICK HERE
Click to expand...

very nice.

only extra thing I could think of would be to sleeve the PSU cables.
 
I'm thinking about now replacing the round ide cables for the flat ones and see where i can get them to fit.. Hopefully I can manage a better solution for airflow with those, seeing as those round ones are long and the excess has to be blocking the airflow cause it's like one big bulge in front of my hard drives.

Also, loki, what are some good sleeving materials that won't leave sticky residue on my psu wires?
 
Originally posted by: nboy22
I'm thinking about now replacing the round ide cables for the flat ones and see where i can get them to fit.. Hopefully I can manage a better solution for airflow with those, seeing as those round ones are long and the excess has to be blocking the airflow cause it's like one big bulge in front of my hard drives.

Also, loki, what are some good sleeving materials that won't leave sticky residue on my psu wires?
Click to expand...

cable loom. its what i used. link
the pics were taken befor i upgraded my computer.
 
Just went out and picked up some zipper ties, *click click click* going to fix it up a bit with some of those. Then tommorow I'm going to the home depot and getting some wire wraps, I checked them out and they're very cheap. So it'll hopefully look even better by evening tommorow
 
I just thought of something, I have an extra fan now, Its smaller, but I think it might be worth putting in, It's from my old heatsink and fan, it's a Thermaltake M.I.T. Anyone think It's worth it to put it in? if I do, what is the most optimal place to mount it? Should I make it exhaust or intake? I have 2 intakes, and 3 exhausts currently.
 
(click)-> HERE Is the new update, not a completely big difference, but definately not as noticable then the twisty ties. Zip ties now added, so I guess tommorow I might try and see what the regular IDE cables are like inside the case instead of those round ones.. they are actually really bulky and I try to keep them out of the way as much as possible.
 
If I don't have a side panel and my temps are fine do I need to worry about the inside? My wires are a mess, despite many attempts to clean them up.
 
nboy your wiring makes me jealous 🙂

i ought to work on my wiring some. i doubt it will help my temp too much as it seems mostly dependant on the ambient temp of my room but i may get an extra degree or so drop who knows 🙂
 
Yes, it's definately a good turn out for me considering what it looked like before 😀.

gordan, just spend an hour or so, it's like an art of its own I guess, I spent probably 3 whole hours just organizing it, but that's combined time over about 3 days, I'm still planning on messing with it some more.
 
Mitchafi: as for you, do you have any temperatures of your system temp or CPU temp that you could post? It's kinda hard to tell without any temps, with good airflow, usually when you have the case open, the system temp rises and the processor temp decreases, but when it is closed the temperature of the system decreases if it has good airflow and the processor temp increases.
 
I use Asus Probe and at 215 HTT idle my temps are generally ALWAYS 38 CPU/35 MB. I have cool and quiet enabled and of course it drops 1 or 2 degrees on average when I run it at stock. And yes I have noticed when the case is open the system temp gets higher than the CPU temp. Always thought that was strange. Now if I wasn't so poor and had a digital camera I could show you all.
 
I'm pretty sure that means you have a good airflow going on. It does that with mine too, except the system doesn't get hotter than my CPU temp, but it certainly gets hotter. If you do have messy wires though, pick up some zip ties and experiment with how clean you can get it.
 
thanks for the advice, where can I get those ties? I don't ever recall seeing them except used to package items I have purchased.
 
last week while shopping in bargin stores w/ my brother in an attempt to find materials to mod a case we found packages of zip ties. ill have to spend a while working on that tonite maybe :thumbsup:
 
I got mine at Home Depot, there are also wire covers there I'm thinking about picking up to make my wires look even better. I imagine you'd be able to get them at maybe an Ace Hardware store and another hardware store. Also, maybe a Wal-Mart.
 
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