With the fan replacement going on, I also received my new UV blue cabling. Since the UV red cables were more pink than red because of my blue LED fans, I ordered replacements cables. I also decided to purchase shorter cables for the floppy drive and DVD burner to help with cable management. As usual, everything posed for a picture on my bed:
Notice that the cables are clear and not blue. I decided to get clear ones that react blue to the UV light so that they looked silverish when under natural sunlight (with the UV light off), in case I decide not to buy another UV light.
In addition to the two fans mentioned in my previous post, I also bought a PSU vibration dampening kit from SVC (which I will use when I get my Ultra X3 modular PSU later), and some heat-shrink tubing and a 1/4" to 1/8" headphone jack for my amplifier from Radio Shack. The headphone jack was a side-purchase, and has nothing to do with this case mod, so I'm not sure why it wanted to pose with the other items for the picture, but I didn't argue.
A close-up of the two fans tested above:
The heat-shrink tubing was purchased because I needed smaller tubing for my current sleeving operation on the Thermaltake SmartFan fan controller being used on my Silverstone FM121 fan, which is in my Tuniq Tower 120. In my previous internal case pictures, you can see the wiring being wrapped around one of the rear 120mm fans:
With the new clear UV blue cables, and the sleeved fan controller, you can see a nice improvement in the cable management and overall quality of the setup:
This cable management masterpiece is documented with the following pictures:
You can see the supplies I used, including the hair dryer that I utilize to shrink the tubing. It isn't as instantaneous at shrinking the tubing as a hot air gun would be, but it gets the job done and doesn't cost me a thing so no complaints here. My Leatherman also came in handy again: it saved me from having to get up and go into the other room to get scissors!
This picture is of the sleeving partially complete. The fraying of the mesh always perturbed me, but it ends up getting covered up by the heat-shrink tubing so all is well.
Slowly sliding the cables into the mesh reminds me of a snack eating something, but maybe that's just me... It is kind of a pain to have to slide the cable all the way through the mesh, but as you will see in the next picture, it's worth the effort!
And finally, the finished product:
You can see on the end with the 2-pin plug that the cabling looks like it gets thicker as it enters the heat-shrink tubing. This is because I had to triple up the cables in order to make the heat-shrink tubing snug on them when it was exposed to heat. I would have liked to have used smaller tubing, but then it would have fit around the 2-pin head. Regardless, the result is good so I'm pleased!
The next (and final) sleeving project will be for the Kama Meter fan controller. This will be done when my shipment of Silenx fans arrive and are installed later this week. A bonus of the Silenx fans is that their cables are clear and glued together so no sleeving is necessary and the blend into the background well.