Make Your Own Round Cables

All of us knows that good airflow contributes to a cool system. Having all the hot air exhausted out of the system and bringing in fresh cool air is important to keep all those components, especially overclocked ones, working at the optimum level. So I am gonna do a quickie and show you how you can make your own round cables to improve the airflow in your casing.

Disclaimer : I will not be responsible if you damage your cables, hurt yourself or worst still, someone else, following my guide!! You do it at your own risk!!

The autopsy equipments....

Firstly, you will need a few things. You will definitely need a penknife (a very SHARP one!!) or an Exacto knife or whatever you call it in your village! :O) You will also need a couple of cable ties or zip ties and some electrical tapes. It doesn't matter what colour they are, I don't think the colours have any effect on cooling! If you can find a PINK one, go ahead!!! ;-)

The victims......

Before we start, let's take a look at the victims, shall we?? I have done this cable mod to 50-pin SCSI-2 cables, floppy cables and normal IDE Channel cables. They are rather cheap and because I do a lot of repair and installation for friends and relatives, I have quite a lot of them....they are fairly easy to work with as the gap between each cables are quite big...on the other hand, the new UDMA66 cables are very tightly packed together....that makes it a teeny weeny bit difficult, so I chickened out on that one!! ;-p Hey, they're quite expensive, you know!!

See the difference???

Now that you've met the victims, let's begin the operation. You can split the cables into different configuration; into groups of 10 or 5, but I'll be splitting them into single cables as it will make the cables more flexible. You could separate the individual cables just by using your fingers and pulling them away from each other, or use a sharp knife to cut an opening in between the cables. I strongly suggest the later as it is much easier and also requires less force, therefore reducing the chance of you damaging the cables altogether.

You could do this.....or........

THIS!!

Pull them apart slowly....

When using the knife, just cut a small enough opening so that you could pry the cables apart with your hands. Warning - Do not attempt to use the knife to cut all the way through! You could accidentally cut through the cables and render them useless!! Once you got that, use your fingers to pull them apart. Continue to do the same with the rest of the cables until you get something like this:

There! You're all done!

Close up of the cables...

Then use the cable ties to bind the wires together at both ends. You could also use them for the whole length, but I would recommend using the tapes for that. And also, it looks nicer!!

Tie the ends together.

Use the tapes to tape around the cables, starting from one end to the other. This will make the cables bind together into a small bundle, much less in width than the original cable.

VOILA! Only 10mm thick!!!

There! It's all done! Now your puter's not only gonna run cooler, but there'll be lotsa space for you work with when upgrading or troubleshooting your PC. There has been some talk of data loss or signal crosstalk when you do this, but I have been using them for almost 6 months with no such problems whatsoever....GOOD LUCK!!