PCG Article Do you care about your cable management? Article discussion

[Lutfij]

^ OOOOOF! The art of folding flat ribbon (IDE/PATA)cables was truly an art, busted my knuckles trying to get them tucked neatly in a case devoid of any cablemanagement loops with only the underside of the motherboard and the motherboard tray to sandwich.

 

[Krud]

Yeah but if it really didn't serve much of a purpose, you wouldn't see case manufacturers redesigning their cases to facilitate it better now would you? It's more than just a selling point.

I agree with you that it looks neater if you organize your cables, so I'm willing to listen to most arguments in favor of cable management, but the "otherwise manufacturers wouldn't do it" route isn't that convincing of one. I've seen manufacturers do all sorts of things that ultimately didn't serve much of a purpose, because they needed to give consumers reasons (or in some cases excuses) to buy a new case rather than repurpose their old one. That being said, I do admit I prefer a case with easy cable management over one without.

 

[Colif]

luckily the heat of components inside the PC was lower in the age of IDE and flat cables that didn't care what you wanted with airflow.
I learned about benefits of airflow by accident through using my last 2 cases. My TJ09 had an extra fan in front of GPU that sucked air in through vents on sides whereas my FT02 showed me benefits of positive pressure by having what was until this year the best air cooling in any case for last 10 years.

Cases caring to give you places to put cables only started in the last 10 years, any case before then it was not even thought of. Its now expected whereas I expect early on you paid for the privilege. My current case only one I have had that had any.

 

[Lutfij]

I recall people drilled holes into the motherboard tray, then used cable clamps(bundlers, a la MDPC-X) and then managed their cables at the edge of the motherboard tray. Similar ideas blossomed and were incorporated into builds like the MurderBox(later dubbed the MBX) project.

 

[Colif]

My last case had no window so really what it looked like inside didn't matter so much.
Its the growth in size of side windows and the usage of actual glass instead of side panels with easily scratched acrylic side windows stuck in them, that has led to much of the cable management now. Its much harder to hide things below the line of sight when the entire side of case is a sheet of tempered glass.
I guess the guy who thought of the PSU shroud should have got a raise. He solved the question of where to hide cables now. Modular PSU helped too. No snakes of cables that you don't need.

 

[Frag Maniac]

...but the "otherwise manufacturers wouldn't do it" route isn't that convincing of one. I've seen manufacturers do all sorts of things that ultimately didn't serve much of a purpose...

The way I see it, since less cable clutter at the very least encourages regular cleaning, something even cable management skeptics here have agreed on, it's highly likely users paying attention to cable management would also be less likely to errantly wire something, or through neglect of cleaning, cause a component to fail. So yeah, it makes sense that case manufacturers would make their cases easy to route cables with appropriately placed holes and cable protecting grommets (which also make it easier to pull cables through them). It's something that would garner praise from both users and component manufacturers. Sometimes when users refuse to do something, they're really just wishing the manufacturers would make the process easier.

 

[Frindis]

If you want to be smart about cable management, you just buy two cardboard boxes. One for your PC and one for your cables sticking out. You can even paint the boxes so they look nice, even paint one of them to look like your tower. Nobody will be able to see any cables and to prevent the heat you just cut a little opening in the back of the cardboard box for airflow. In the winter you close the flap so your PC does not freeze, perhaps throw a big scarf around it for extra measures.

 

[Frag Maniac]

To avoid the hassle, I just bought a laptop, but I also tried to hide the cables on my old computer, only I realized that it is better to do, in special cases, for more convenient sorting of cables.

With laptops you have a worse problem IMO, not being able to do much about performance or temp issues.