Maximum PC

I know I need sleeving. So aside from that suggestions are appreciated.

http://img5.exs.cx/img5/882/10001913zm.jpg

http://img5.exs.cx/img5/5644/10001931ev.jpg

ya mite need some IDE cables in there ... but looks good so far.

xveganx, xveganx, xveganx,

I really hate to live up to my name, but jeez man, did you read the rules before you posted your first message -- 4 months ago? Did you happen to notice the size of your images before posting them? You have a 900X1200 and a 1200X900 that weigh in at a whopping 769 KB. I usually surf on a broadband connection, but the snow has left me with only my dialup and it took a couple of minutes to download your pictures.

Have a little consideration, willya?

Okay, that rant aside, I can see you tried to hide the wires and even wrap your flat IDE ribbons, but I guess you know it needs a little work. It's pretty difficult to get all the wires and cables in a system out of sight. They just don't build a case or give you enough wire length to do that. So, you have to plan a wire management system that makes it as unobtrusive and neat as possible.

You mentioned sleeving, but that's not an easy task for the novice. To do proper sleeving, you would have to remove and replace molexes and connectors, using special tools, or at the very least, special techniques. I've seen beautiful mods turn mediocre with a bad sleeve job alone.

An excellent way to give your wires and cables a neat and orderly look is to use split loom. It's inexpensive, easy to do and, with all the various sizes and colors, makes a bland interior look stylish and professionally done.


I can see you wanted to increase your airflow, as well as your neatness factor, by using rounded IDE cables. No doubt you experienced some difficulty with wrapping the HDD cables. Is that heat shrink? Notice how it kinked and that much of it didn't get covered? Well, you had the right idea.

Attention to the littlest details can make the job easier and look much better. If you can't afford to get the same style and color cables for all your drives, you can cover them all with split loom to make them look the same. The loom will also allow your cables to flow in smoother lines. I would suggest you invest in more silver braided IDE cables like the one on your optical drive. Get them long enough to route along the side of the drive cage and follow a single path to the connectors on the mobo. Measure for each cable so that you get the length that is best suited for the path you follow.

There are a lot of small wires -- fan connectors, front panel wires, etc. -- that all need to be planned out. Most of these are prob'ly long enough to tuck behind the edge of the motherboard, along the drive cage or the bottom of the case. You may have to try a couple different routings just to get the look and accessibility you need. Do keep in mind that these wires may have to be unplugged occasionally.

There are a few things that make wire management a little easier. Zip ties are great for grouping wires together and for attaching them to various points on your chassis to hold them in place and out of the way. You can also use them to snug the ends of your split loom so it doesn't slip and expose the ugly wires underneath. Like the split loom itself, zip ties come in a variety of colors, so you can mix and match for a very unique look.

Another item I have used with great success is that sticky, rubbery black stuff that auto glaziers use around your windshield. I don't know what it's called, but it comes in a coil with a silicone coated paper running the length of it. I pull off a little ball and stick it an out of the way place and press the wire into it. It stays put, but is easy to pull free without having to cut it loose like you would a zip tie.


There's also small wire clips and clamps in a variety of sizes you can get in the hardware section of almost any store. They have sticky pads with peel-off paper to make mounting them easy.

These are just a few things you can do to sweeten up the inside of your case. If you have a window mod and a few lights, it will make all the difference in the world if your wires and cables have that finished look. If you need links to where to buy any of the items I mentioned, or need additional suggestions, let me know. For now though, see about resizing those pics so we can all enjoy the progress of your wire management project.


Click any image to see a larger one.

My Best R'gards, Grump
The Mad Modder

Grump, nice post and welcome to the forum - hope you stick around.

xveganx, please resize the pics to 640x480 or less. There's a handful of great suggestions/tips in the post above, but it's difficult to read with the tables being obliterated due to oversized pics.

grump, I saw some of the other posts you made and that had pics in them, and I just wanna say, damn! nice paint jobs, wiring jobs, window jobs, overall mod jobs! those look great! keep up the good work man!

That's the most understated advice I've heard. It's almost never thought about weather you will have to ever undo that creation you spent so much time getting right.

On my first real extensive try at a clean wiring job, I gained exactly what I wanted...hardly a cable or single wire out of place. But over the next few months, it had become a mess by a series of regular upgrades. Just add one S/ATA drive and you'll be cutting out cables left and right, then redo'ing them again. Looking at it now, it's hardly a glimpse of the time I had once spent on it 2 years ago...I just let it go.

The first thing that stuck out at me were the IDE cable boots. As you see, some just fall off the end. I've used a set like this before and was just ticked off that they fell off if you ever touched them. Epoxy fixed this, but if the boots I had used were clear, it'd have been an eye sore still. (mine looked like the identical cables that Grump shows in his pics. Where he used Zipties, it just pumped Epoxy in the sleeve or the boot)

And, while it's not the easy route, breaking out the soldering iron is almost a must to get all those single wires cleaned up. Adding lengths here and shortening some there can get a more custom fit than the "one size fits all" method they leave us with. Where you may have 4 singles popping out the top, the front I/O out the bottom right, etc...I'll go to great lengths to get them flowing off at one single point; hidden if at all possible. For just an example on your case, I'd take the HS leads and whatever is going under the board and get 'em all flowing together. I know the CPU_FAN header is right there, but it's an option to add 6-8" just to get it going with the others, then sneak back to the header connector (take them all straight down the HS's top to the case at a 90, route them under the edge to the rear, then loop it back to the header). Wires going away from your eye are harder to catch than ones going horizontal or vertical, and 90-degrees to the case for another route can usually void you of this.

And, my pet-peave...the crap the power supply manufactures give us is NEVER good enough. They twist them in and out of each other and make a nest. I've spent an entire weekend cleaning up an Antec loom :p It involves pulling them down to ground-zero and putting them back in an orderly fashion, sleeving them in the process.

And for an example, again, that horizontal bar for your case is a good size to stuff the ATX loom into. And...again...a 90-degree exit from there would be very pleasing to look at.

Wiring cases can get psychotic, and drive compulsive people like me to the asylem. I've spent a GREAT deal of time in my last build on this one facet, and it's still not good enough to call done. Even S/ATA cables are giving me fits. Wires....just the word highten's my blood pressure

I have got to be the worst wirer ever, basically, i leave them in the middle of nowhere, and only move them if they conflict with a fan or heatsink. problem is it takes forever to wire it nicely.....

My wiring is pretty piss poor as well, especially considering I'm an electrician
Guess I spend so much time making massive wiring jobs look neat and orderly at work that I don't want to mess with it when I'm at home

I edited your post to only refer to your images as links -- if you want to size them down, feel free to repost them as images. Refer to the rules for more information.

...thing for me to do right also. When you build custom cases, you spend lots of time assembling and disassembling the components, so you don't do much with the wiring other than using tie wraps (not zip ties yet) to hold stuff out of the way. Sometimes I end up with those tie wraps staying in there, as long as I keep them away from metal connectors. You know what else works too? Duct tape! I found you can buy this stuff in several colors. I got some 3" wide black duct tape for my latest project, and it's really helped. Sometimes there is no way to use wire loom, which is usually an excellent idea.

I like hiding all the small wires, but the power cords from the PSU to my mobo are wrapped in UV cable wrap, so it looks nice. which reminds me, my new case needs wrapping and wiring.... l8a