Hey OCN, this is my first thread and I hope I can entertain some people with it.
Recently my Corsair H80 cooler died and since I run at 4,5 Ghz and was too lazy to clock it down so I could use my stock cooler I decided that while I waited for my replacement of my H80, I could finally spend some quality time with my beloved cables in my build. (rd. candle light dinner next to my case).
I decided I'd log my work so people could comment on how I did it. Especially since this is my first build I'm sure people can point a lot out that I don't know about or just forgot to do.
Firstly I took everything out apart from the PSU, the Motherboard and my graphics card.
aah, so clean... (Click to show)
Since I'm a newbie, I didn't sleeve my cables myself, but I bought cable extensions that were pre-sleeved.
Sleeves (Click to show)
Since the 24-pin and 8-pin are not modular on my PSU I decided it was probably best to start with those.
I connected the 8-pin extension cable to my motherboard and lined it along the side of the case (on the back) as you can see in the following pictures :
8-pin (Click to show)
Next, I connected the 24-pin extension cable to my motherboard and because of the lenght of the cable I figured it was best to run the cable up first, have it make a turn and go back down, just so I wouldn't have to hide that ugly cable somewhere in my case and waste a lot of space.
24-pin (Click to show)
At this point I didn't really know what would be best to do next. I decided to just do the Sata cabling for my 2 hotswap drives (an SSD boot drive and my 1TB Backup drive)
Hot swap Sata (Click to show)
I then put those 2 drives in the hot swap mounts of my case...
drives (Click to show)
There, now that that's done, I put them in the case and I was ready for my next step. Even though I forgot to include them in my pic, I also had 2 6-pin extension cables. So that's what I did next.
I have to say, they were quite a pain in the *** to lay nicely on the back of my case but eventually I figured out a way that worked pretty well...
6-pin (Click to show)
Next up, I needed to give my sata powered blu-ray drive some power, not much to see here :
Sata (Click to show)
And ofcourse give some juice to my hotswap drives. I kind of pulled the cable in the the bottom drive bay, pulled it up inside that space, and got it out again right where it needed to be, so most of the cable would be hidden, and easily accessible to connect my fans to the cable later on :
Molex (Click to show)
Time to adjust the front panel connectors a bit. Since I don't use e-Sata and firewire, I disconnected the cables from it (less cables, less cable management to do right?).
Front Panel (Click to show)
I then put the top back on and got shocked when I saw how much space these cables took up. But oh well, after trying a couple of things. I figured out the best way was to start with the small wires for the power / reset buttons and the leds.
I ended up with a nice looping to take care of the leftover of those wires.
buttons and leds (Click to show)
Now, the most annoying part of all : the USB 3.0 front panel connector, trust me, this was the most annoying part of the whole cable management. I think I spent about 45 minutes figuring out the best way to line those cables and with the help of some pretty string double sided tape, this is the result.
Frontpanel USB 3.0 (Click to show)
The only thing left was the front panel audio and the front panel USB 2.0. I did put some black tape around them because, even though they are at the bottom of the motherboard, with all the colors, they'd stick out and it would look ugly.
Other than that I just had to connect the case fans and I was done.
This is the final result :
and the back :
Any suggestions on what I could do better? I'd love to hear from you!
I'll update with a pic of my H80 installed as soon as I can.
Recently my Corsair H80 cooler died and since I run at 4,5 Ghz and was too lazy to clock it down so I could use my stock cooler I decided that while I waited for my replacement of my H80, I could finally spend some quality time with my beloved cables in my build. (rd. candle light dinner next to my case).
I decided I'd log my work so people could comment on how I did it. Especially since this is my first build I'm sure people can point a lot out that I don't know about or just forgot to do.
Firstly I took everything out apart from the PSU, the Motherboard and my graphics card.
aah, so clean... (Click to show)
Since I'm a newbie, I didn't sleeve my cables myself, but I bought cable extensions that were pre-sleeved.
Sleeves (Click to show)
Since the 24-pin and 8-pin are not modular on my PSU I decided it was probably best to start with those.
I connected the 8-pin extension cable to my motherboard and lined it along the side of the case (on the back) as you can see in the following pictures :
8-pin (Click to show)
Next, I connected the 24-pin extension cable to my motherboard and because of the lenght of the cable I figured it was best to run the cable up first, have it make a turn and go back down, just so I wouldn't have to hide that ugly cable somewhere in my case and waste a lot of space.
24-pin (Click to show)
At this point I didn't really know what would be best to do next. I decided to just do the Sata cabling for my 2 hotswap drives (an SSD boot drive and my 1TB Backup drive)
Hot swap Sata (Click to show)
I then put those 2 drives in the hot swap mounts of my case...
drives (Click to show)
There, now that that's done, I put them in the case and I was ready for my next step. Even though I forgot to include them in my pic, I also had 2 6-pin extension cables. So that's what I did next.
I have to say, they were quite a pain in the *** to lay nicely on the back of my case but eventually I figured out a way that worked pretty well...
6-pin (Click to show)
Next up, I needed to give my sata powered blu-ray drive some power, not much to see here :
Sata (Click to show)
And ofcourse give some juice to my hotswap drives. I kind of pulled the cable in the the bottom drive bay, pulled it up inside that space, and got it out again right where it needed to be, so most of the cable would be hidden, and easily accessible to connect my fans to the cable later on :
Molex (Click to show)
Time to adjust the front panel connectors a bit. Since I don't use e-Sata and firewire, I disconnected the cables from it (less cables, less cable management to do right?).
Front Panel (Click to show)
I then put the top back on and got shocked when I saw how much space these cables took up. But oh well, after trying a couple of things. I figured out the best way was to start with the small wires for the power / reset buttons and the leds.
I ended up with a nice looping to take care of the leftover of those wires.
buttons and leds (Click to show)
Now, the most annoying part of all : the USB 3.0 front panel connector, trust me, this was the most annoying part of the whole cable management. I think I spent about 45 minutes figuring out the best way to line those cables and with the help of some pretty string double sided tape, this is the result.
Frontpanel USB 3.0 (Click to show)
The only thing left was the front panel audio and the front panel USB 2.0. I did put some black tape around them because, even though they are at the bottom of the motherboard, with all the colors, they'd stick out and it would look ugly.
Other than that I just had to connect the case fans and I was done.
This is the final result :
and the back :
Any suggestions on what I could do better? I'd love to hear from you!
I'll update with a pic of my H80 installed as soon as I can.
Prepared for Guild Wars 2
(12 items) |
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Prepared for Guild Wars 2
(12 items) |
, I could cover it up by tensioning them when I attached them to the back of my case, but it's not ideal.
