Cable Management for my PC

Along similar lines of my previous posts an air-cooling is the subject of cable management. I work in Telecommunications area and we building networking and communicate software. And do that we use networked computers and boards in our labs. And we do our cable management by grouping them, tying them up and then running them neatly behind the equipment avoiding man made catastrophes ( I can remember the anguish when I run 24 hour or 48 hours long duration performance tests to test software stability, only to find out that it failed in closing stages because a network cable either on equipment under test or network pulled out because someone accidently tripped or walked over some cables).  The use case of such arrangement is that it is easy to debug in case something goes wrong or carry out the upgrades when they are needed. And without getting lost or pulling 10 other things just  to fix one. The same holds good for the PC as well.

However cable management for PC has another angle. If you do not have a mish-mash or noodle soup of cables in your chassis next to and over the motherboard, you:

(1)    Allow air to freely circulate and cool the hardware

(2)    Prevent micro dust from  collecting on the cables and spoiling their look

Most people however do not pay attention to this as they had no perceivable value in the short-term. Its the similar attitude summarized by martin Fowler in his keynote address at AGILE CONFERENCE 2011, "the software works for me as a user and hence why do I care about how the inside (design) looks !!! What matters is that it is cheap and that enough". Unfortunately like software design, cable management effects the stamina of hardware (how long it lasts).

Here is how the insides of my PC look like. Quite a few extension cards (graphics, sound, WiFi, case lighting slot plates, etc) as well as multiple fans, peripherals, case mod lights etc (not exactly a simple setup but not the most complex one either):

Not the best cable management that you may come across (and I have an story to hide at the back of the motherboard. More on this later), but decent enough to begin with. My chassis is a HAF-X and it provides very decent cable management options such as:

(a)    Rubber grommets to allow cables to go out from the PSU and come in at the right place back leaving the least obstruction.
(b)   A nice enclosure next to the PSU to hide the cables coming out from my PSU

(c)    Slightly elevated case panel at the back of the motherboard to accommodate cable bundle

(d)   And enough placeholders for typing the cables and running them in organized manner at the back with zip  ties or even twist ties

Besides I have a Corsair AX850 *fully* modular PSU, which allows me to just connect the cables to the PSU which are really needed, eliminating the un-needed cable bundle.  I recommend others to use modular units or semi-modular with fixed Motherboard power connectors (you anyways need them always). This Corsair  PSU has very neat cables which have a surrounding piping.

Assemblers need to pay attention to the cable management options on their chassis when they buy them, incase they are not buying the HAF-X ;-)). The only gripes I have about my installation are:

(a)    Because of the case height the optional power cable on the top just about reaches the header on the motherboard. Not good as it will put some lateral force on the header. Don’t know whom to blame CM for the height of the recess or Corsair for the length of the cable

(b)   The Placement of PCI-X Power cable son the Graphics card (Asus GTX 560 Ti) is on the top longitudinal side which requires bringing them out through the VGA fan bracket. Its an ugly arrangement. I prefer such connector to be  shorter side which would face the front of the case (see how its done in my Asus Xonar Essence ST soundcard with 4-pin molex power connector at the shorter side) making the cable length that is required to be inside the chassis very small and non obtrusive. This would have become more ugly if I had more than 1 Graphics card in SLI mode. Why Asus why  ?

(c)    And I also wonder sometimes that if cables are supposed to be run mostly on the side behind the motherboard, why do manufacturer’s don’t run DVD and Blue ray drive’s power connectors and data cable connectors on the side. It would be much cleaner (look at the way the HDD’s and SSDs have been mounted in the HAF-X).  At-least they should give an option in some models …

Occasionally when I am able to steal some time on the weekend from my family, I do open the PC up and  tidy up the cable management even more. I still have the back of the motherboard side to address …