L33t Masta

I need to make this look as neat as possible without drilling holes.





Any suggestions? I did the red mesh sleeving myself. Not bad for a 1st attempt.

whe3ls

zip ties

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Murlocke

All you can really do is use zipties if you arn't willing to tear it apart and drill holes..



Mine after 6 hours of work and planning.

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L33t Masta

Well I have DOZENS of Zipties. Actually 6 that are UV red.

whe3ls

well some one is going to have fun lol

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L33t Masta

Yea...it's kind of a mess. Maybe I will drill some holes for SATA and maybe some of the bigger cords.

Murlocke

I find the easiest way is to just tear it completely apart and slowly rebuild it doing 1 cable at a time, and drilling a hole for that cable if needed. Most people don't want to spend 6 hours on cable management though. I like my computer looking nice.

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Muhahahaha

What I did was take everything completely apart. I even ended up taking out the drive bays and the power supply. Once everything is apart, you can put everything back in, one thing at a time, while finding a good place for any wires it has.

First, I looked at where the case plugs were on my motherboard, and I organized those cabes. *Looks in case* My front panel audio plug is toward the lower end of my rear panel, so I routed that cable along the crevice at the top of the case, then around the corner and between the rear panel and the rear fan. That left the end of it in a good position to plug in later.

Front panel audio cable plugged in (the dangling plug is the "HD Audio", the AC '97 is actually plugged in, if you look):



My USB and case button cables got shoved along the crevice between the left side of the drive bay frame and the case. Also, at the beginning I took off the two cable ties in the case so they could be used later.

I also unclipped the fan control switches from the sides of the two drive bays. I turned them around and pointed them out the front of the case for easy access, lol. After putting my drives where I wanted them and clipping the fan power plugs back down, I put the drive bays back in.

Fan control switches coming out the front of the case:



I have two SATA hard drives, so I put them in the upper two spots in the lower cage. This left me with plenty of room to put all my extra power supply cables under the hard drives. At this point, I organized all my PSU plugs into the ones I need and the ones I don't. All the ones I didn't need got tied together at two points with the two cable ties, and then shoved under the hard drives.

All plugs that needed to go somewhere above the video card, except the 4-pin CPU power, went between the SATA data cables and the side of the case. In fact, I got all of them, including the thick 24-pin cable, pinned down in between the black fan mount and the side of the case. The IDE cable for my DVD burner ended up flat underneath everything. Then my main power, and then a molex cable. I put my DVD burner in the second spot. This gave me a place to hide parts of cables that came from the top of the case, while also giving me a place to shove part of the molex cable beneath the DVD burner.

The SATA data cables were pretty easy to deal with. Any excess just got shoved into the space above the drive it was plugged into. My SATA power cables were a bit weird, but the excess just got shoved toward the bottom of the case.

Oh, my PCIe power connector also got wedged between the black fan mount and the edge of the case. It just goes up, and then curves back around.

That just leaves the case fans and the 4-pin CPU power. My 4-pin plug happens to be pretty short, so I just made a straight shot for the socket, and plugged it in.

Four-pin power connector:



The two front fans and the top fan all had their plugs routed to the bottom of the case, along the side, and underneath the SATA data cables. There they were plugged into a molex on a cable that was otherwise unused. This is one of the cables that I had tied up down here, so it was very convenient to use. The rear fan actually has it's cable passing out of the case through the cable hole beneath it, and then back into the case through the cable hole just below that. After that it just passes along (and behind some stuff, to sorta pin it down) until it comes to the other fan plugs, and plugs in with them.

Rear fan power plug going out:



Rear fan power plug coming back in:



Where all the case fans plug in at:



Lastly, the switch for the rear fan passes out of the rear cable hole as well. So all three of my 120 mm fans have their switch outside of the case for easy access. The 200 mm fan isn't very loud, even when set on high, so I just put it on high and forget about it. No need for easy access there.

Case with side panel off:



Case with side panel on:



It's not the best, but everything is organized. It's a lot better than just plugging everything in all willy-nilly.

I hope my descriptions help some, lol. I have a few pics inserted, but my crappy camera phone makes it hard to take any good pics.

I took pictures of what I could, but if you would like to see a pic of something else, just ask.

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