Rounding Cables Guide

Rounding Cables

How round are your cables?

It seems as if case-mods have taken this industry over by storm. Every day there are more and more sites with "cool-case" galleries, mod articles, and new ideas popping out. I consider myself to be one of the pioneers of case modification as I first modded my case by making a blowhole and window around 13 months ago. Nowadays, those kinds of mods are on hundreds of people's cases, and are considered nothing out of the ordinary.

During my intial mods, I ventured into rounding cables to improve airflow. The job I did was ok, but I wasn't fully satisfied. They looked ugly, and the middle connector was irritating me. The solution was to wrap them in split loom, and rip off the middle connector. Read on to find out if it worked or not...

The Materials

As far as I know, there is no difference between ATA66 and ATA100 cables, please email me at: cole_NOSPAM@directron.us (remove _NOSPAM manually) if I'm incorrect. I would like to point out the length of the ATA cables. Recommended length is 18", BUT you can find 36-38 inch ones around, but I would be weary of rounding them. They work fine on their own, but I've had instability when rounding longer cables. It may or may not work for you, however. My first time around rounding my cables, I used blue split loom to do them, since then, I have stocked flourescent spiral wrap, and that stuff is cool as hell when coupled with a black light, so you will see some pictures of the loom, and some of the spiral wrap.

Before we start with this, I would like to point out that ANY and ALL damage caused to you, your computer and parts, your neighbor, your dog, your cat, your ferret, and anyone else, Cole3D or CaseEtc will not be held liable for any of those damages. But of course, if you cat looses a tail to an uncovered blowhole, please send us pics ;)

Construction Begins

I want to say now, that it would be redundant to cover all different types of cables, so I will just provide pictures and details of how we faired with the ATA66 and some of the ATA33 cables. Before you start, it helps to make sure your blade is clean and sharp, and also that you are cutting on a viable surface.

ATA66 cables have 80 wires, ATA33 have 40 wires; my recommendation is to cut the ATA66 cables every 8 wires, and the ATA33 every 5 wires. This helps eliminate cross-talk and also keeps everything even, so there aren't any left over wires. The goal is to remove the middle connector, round the cables, and place in the split loom.

The move to be made is removing the middle connector. This may seem like it would totally damage the cable, but that is not so. You will need pliers and electrical tape for this operation. To remove the middle connector, just get a good grip on the smaller, bottom piece, and pry it off with the pliers. After that is out of the way, use the pliers and pull STRAIGHT up on the other piece. Be careful not to rip out any wires or the cable will be hosed. If all goes well, proceed on to slicing the cables.

ATA66 cables are a little tougher to cut because you don't have much leeway to work with. I use the tip of a razor blade, and make a VERY SMALL slit every 8 cables. I then use your fingers to finish off the job. If you slip a bit and cut into a cable in which wire is visible, just put some electrical tape around the conductor.

Assuming you have been problem free, the hard part is now over. Use electrical tape and cover the exposed area where you took out the middle connector.

The easiest way to organize the cables would be to stack them on over another. Once they are stacked, use a few cable ties to secure them temporarly.

Finishing off the Job

Some people stop here, but I if you have a window, the cables can get ugly and quite annoying to view. You have a few options in which to cover your cables: split loom, heatshrink, spiral wrap, and plain old electrical tape. Split loom is the easiest, heatshrink gives the best performance, spiral wrap looks the best, and electrical tape is the cheapest. So each has its own advantages. Personally, since I have a black light in my case, I went with flourescent spiral wrap and it simply looks awesome.

With any luck, the airflow in your case is much better now, and those ugly grey cables are now perhaps blue, red, yellow, black, or even flourescent. This is a fairly easy mod, and does not take any $100 power tools to do it with. I hope this guide has answered some questions, but you can always check out the forums or email me at: cole_NOSPAM@directron.us (remove _NOSPAM manually).