Round IDE Cables

Intro: Round IDE Cables

If you need to clean up some of your wiring then rounding your IDE cables can help. It makes the cables much smaller and easy to manipulate into small areas to make your case wiring look all pretty.

STEP 1: What You Need

For this simple project you will only need a
1. IDE Cable or Floppy cable
2. Some kind of knife. I used a X-acto hobby knife.
3. Zip ties
4. Electric tape (optional)

STEP 2: Cutting

Get your IDE or floppy cable and cut right in between where the wires are held together. Do it every 2-3 wires. Then pull them apart to the head of the cable.

STEP 3: Wrap and Zip Tie

Twist the cable around until you get a good round cable. Then get your zip ties and put around 3 spaced out depending on how long your cable is.

STEP 4: Make Them Look Nicer

Get your electric tape if you had any and just wrap it around the cables.

STEP 5: Some Other Ways to Hide Your Wires

If you have a nice case you should be able to put some wires on the other side of your case door and run them behind the tray of your motherboard.

You can also drill some holes right where the cables go into the sockets and route them behind the motherboard tray also. Be sure to put some kind of grommet or something to protect the sharp hole you cut in your motherboard tray. I would also recommend taking out the motherboard before you do this...

Comments

[ctrlaltdel02]

Actually you need to maintain pairing, if it is 80conductor cable, high speed. One is data and each second is grounding, so if you want cable speed, you need to slice cable by dividing by 2. And always is option to yust round it up :)

[volund]

Using heatshrink and mesh sleeving would give you a MUCH better look.

[ReCreate]

exactly what i was thinking of

[GorillazMiko]

Nice job. Takes up less space, really easy to do too. Awesome job!

[medicat]

Not to mention that improves air flow inside the case...

[Ibanezfoo]

A for effort. This is quite similar what I used to do way back in the day. Its not pretty, but it works.

[bleachworthy]

lol, man, i remember doing this a looong time ago. and it's usually cheaper to go out and buy the rounded 82 wire cables. If you don't care about the performance of data transfer, you can still use 41wire cables, which are WAY easier to round (cause there are half as many wires) and they generally turn out to be much more flexible (good thing) and can get a good smooth round look to them, as opposed to the ones featured, that have a slight "blocky" shape, an are slightly crooked ( :( ). Your other option here, is to upgrade, and use SATA, which has a very small, sleek wire, about 1/2" wide, by 1/16" thick. Good job anyways! + rating

[CowGuy]

I use sata on my HDD's. I just have an IDE DVD drive. I went cheap instead of getting a SATA one.

[mrmath]

I think that the cable looks better after the round and tie step than it does after the electric tape step. But, then again, I don't care what my cables look like. It's whether or not they get the job done that matters to me.

[CowGuy]

Yeah I sorta realized that, but it protects them I guess.

[!Andrew_Modder!]

lol thats EXACTLY what i did, i got the idea from a previous round ide cable post.