stargate125645

Cable Sleeving Part 2

I was (relatively) recently introduced to better quality sleeving than I had been using in the past, and with more parts coming that would need sleeving I decided to take the bait and purchase the better quality sleeving and redo the previous sleeving as well. Unlike the people who like to not do their research and waste their money on things like MurderMods, I bought my material from wirecare.com. Wirecare is much cheaper and if you want to tell me that you can see a difference in quality then I have a bridge to sell you.

Using the same tools as before, as well as a few new ones I've purchased (namely this magical invention and a wire stripper/crimper that turned out to be less useful than a wife beater in winter - and mislabeled on Performance PCs).

Unlike with the PET sleeving, I had to remove the pins from the plugs on nearly every cable I sleeved because the sleeving did not expand enough to fit over the plugs - the new nylon sleeving barely expands at all.

You can see that the ends fray, so I've added a barbecue lighter to my repertoire. Staggering the pins is also a good idea so that they fit in the sleeving better and a smaller diameter sleeving can be used.

The next three photos show the internals of the Antec 1200 with all of the case fans sleeved - you can compare these to the finished photos of the previous sleeving work log entry.

There are zip ties on the end of many of these cables as the nylon sleeving does not grip the wires well and thus will slip over time. Since the plugs will be hidden behind the motherboard tray, I zip tied those ends rather than the fan end.

Notice that there is no writing on the heat shrink tubing from Wirecare. Very nice!

I would have liked to sleeve the cables further back behind the HDD bays, but the wire clips were so narrow that it would have been virtually impossible. The HDDs will cover most of the heat shrink tubing anyway.

You can see that I also resleeved the front panel cables.

Although not shown in this picture, I've since sleeved the USB cables as well. Unfortunately, a mishap led to my needing to redo the ground cables for both USB cables, which is why I purchased the aforementioned wire stripper/crimper. Thankfully it's the ground so it wouldn't really matter had I not been able to reassemble everything, but I did manage and both USB ports work just fine.

Because the PSU is located at the bottom of the Antec 1200, an ATX12V/EPS12V extension cable is required in almost all cases (and it is stupid that Antec did not include such a cable with the case). No extension cables come with high quality sleeving and black plugs to match my theme, so I had to redo the sleeving and replace the plugs. Below is the extension cable prior to my work.

At the time I wasn't sure whether I would be using an 8-pin plug or 4-pin plug so I purchased enough black connectors to cover all my bases.

The finished product of course looks amazing:


The Ultra X3 1000W power supply does have a 24-pin motherboard cable that is long enough to reach the motherboard while still being routed behind the motherboard tray, but it would have been a tight fit so I purchased an extension cable for it as well.

In this picture I had already removed the white plugs and replaced one end with a black plug. Sleeving this thing was a pain in the rear because the pins need to be marked so that they do not get mixed up in the process.

You can also see that I grouped the individual wires into sets of 6. This was done so that I could use a smaller sleeving diameter, and it also made the cable more flexible.

I also think the extension cable looks better with 4 groups of wires versus one large group. You can compare my sleeved cable with pictures of the original product here.

I purchased two Panaflo UC1s for my TRUE Black. They arrived with white plugs and the lower-quality PET sleeving, so this image provides an excellent side-by-side comparison of the two sleeving types.

With a camera flash the PET sleeving (bottom) is indeed see-through, while the nylon sleeving (top) is not. To match my black theme, I also replaced all of the visible white fan plugs with black ones.

Below is an image of the fan cables reattached to the Panaflos.


The Antec 1200 did not come with a case speaker, so I purchased a replacement Lian Li case speaker from Performance PCs. I sleeved it as well...


I wanted to use a Molex-to-SATA power cable adapter so that I could eliminate an extra cable coming from the PSU. It shipped with a black connector on one and and a white one on the other for some reasons, so I just had one connector to replace.

In the final product I actually removed the metal clip and placed heat shrink over the connector.

I sleeved the cables for both the Antec Spot Cool and the AeroCool XtremeTurbine fans (only the Spot Cool is pictured below).

It turns out that I couldn't get the Spot Cool to work as I planned, but I did fit the XtremeTurbine on the outside of the side panel and at present I'm routing the the cable through the water-cooling tube holes in the rear of the case. I will probably change that to go through the metal mesh holes in the side panel since I'm not using the air filter there as it mitigates airflow from the fan (it doesn't have much static pressure, apparently).

I have decided to show a picture of the cable sleeving in action with the assembled computer, and as I have not added a build log entry for the assembly yet, so you'll have to stay tuned for those images - it will be worth the wait if I do say so myself.

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Ramsey77

Looking good Can't wait to see more.

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stargate125645

By the way, if anyone has ideas for what I can put in my spare 5.25" bay I'm all ears!

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pies

Great job on the sleeving.
You could get a fan controller, or temp sensor for the spare bay.

stargate125645

I have a fan controller already. Still have an extra bay.

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franz

Looks really good so far.

I am not sure if you ever figured this out. I know the OP was 2 months ago. I have the same case, and had to RMA the Bigboy fan. Here is how to remove if you need to do so in the future.

1. Locate the 2 small screws in front of the fan. One of them has a small grounding wire attached. Remove these 2 screws first. After removed you can slide the whole top of the case forward about 1/4 inch to release the plastic tabs, and the whole top comes off.

2. If you want to remove the fan. Remove the 4 screw holding the fan to the top (the ones with the large washers.)

3. You are done. The other 4 screws hold the fan grill in place.

Hope that helps you, or others, with this case.

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stargate125645

Step 1 is the step I missed.

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franz

Lol. Yeah I did too. I was like, there is no way the 2 smallest screws are holding the whole top on.

I almost sent the whole case back to RMA the Bigboy, but I really didnt want to pay the S/H.

Have fun with the rest of your build.

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stargate125645

I have added a couple more pictures to the cable management part 2 entry. I'm working on the system assembly entry right now so expect more soon!

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Mr. Roboto

WOW!

looks amazing. Props to you, good sir.

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