Triggering the OCD computer geeks

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury) 04/18/2020 at 18:08 • Filed to: None

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The colors of the cables don’t match, the colors of the wire ties doesn’t match the cables, the cables aren’t tucked away and meticulously routed, no RGB, etc.

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 04/18/2020 at 18:18

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I’m not bothered. I would expect a case from someone who’d take the time to zip tie all those cables to be a little neater, but it doesn’t trouble me at all that it’s not.

I had a system with dual GPUs, dual optical drives, and 6 HDDs, in an Antec P180 case that caused every single cable to cross over a 2" square area at the bottom front of the motherboard, and after that experience, I don’t think any cable situation can scare me.

In any event, my current machine look like this:

Best way to not have a lot of messy cables is to not have many cables (and to run them on the back of the motherboard.

My HTPC is a bit of a mess:

Clearly I should have gotten a modular power supply, but it would have been way more expensive, and I figured I had lots of places to stash those cables I’’m not using. I’d get rid of that SATA cable I’m not using, but I’m afraid pulling it would dislodge one of the others, and then I’d have to go in and fight with them.  

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 04/18/2020 at 18:19

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man.....next week ill reply with a pic of how i put together a coffee machines wiring :)

so many colours everywhere....and some leftover plugs n shit too...coz who cares about neatness where nobody will ever see it :p

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 04/18/2020 at 18:20

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Yeah, well, don’t look inside the case of my computer...

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > facw 04/18/2020 at 18:25

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A lot of those cable ties are acting more as strain reliefs than anything else. Despite having latches on all of the SATA connectors on all 8 SSDs, look at it wrong and some will pop off. Same thing with the USB 3 header on the mobo - it’s amazing how quickly that comes off.

I could spend time making it look pretty, but I’m always tweaking and swapping items so making it easier to work on is key. I also believe in using as short a cable as necessary even if that means they can’t be neatly tucked away.

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > farscythe - makin da cawfee! 04/18/2020 at 18:29

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just to add... our machines are customizable...used to be every setup had its own cable trees ....neat und tidy... but sometime ago one of the beancounters worked out it’d be much more cost efficient to just order the most complicated cable trees for every machine...

dude wasnt wrong...but its pretty messy on the simpler models

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > farscythe - makin da cawfee! 04/18/2020 at 18:29

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When I was a network engineer I would work to keep things clean and organized since I wasn’t always the one that was working on the equipment. We usually had the supplies and budget necessary to do it right, and my superiors seemed to like the results. But at home? Nah...

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 04/18/2020 at 18:33

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Oh man, do I hate SATA cable connectors. They come loose easily, are easy to damage, are also prone to damaging the drive-side connector, and even with latching connectors, there’s often not enough room on the motherboard to keep a connector from unlatching an adjacent one. It’s good things are going m.2 everywhere so they are becoming somewhat obsolete.

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 04/18/2020 at 18:33

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same...if im not paid...neatness goes right out the window...

but it does kinda bother me to have to make a messy machine at work...i take pride in my work goddamnit...and considering the price tag...it should be neat und tidy

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 04/18/2020 at 18:36

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One job I had sophomore year of college was to make a shitton of patch cables to tidy up our racks. Wasn’t quite as tidy as your after, but still buch better than the before, which was like yours, and all color coded, which was good.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > facw 04/18/2020 at 18:45

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I tend to pack my machines full, with every slot and bay filled. I was about to add a board to give me a couple of PCI slots since I had to cover up the one I had with the GPU. Yeah, I know that they’re obsolete, but I like the quality of my ancient M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card; I’ve put in a SoundBlaster ZX in its place, and it sounds fine, but I can’t help but feel that it’s a lesser card and aimed more at gaming and surround sound.

I had a little more space inside yesterday, but for F@H I threw in a second, big-ass GPU. When I get the replacement fan I plan on putting in the trusty old 4GB GT730 since it only uses one slot instead of two and consumes a shit-ton less power.

The front is also filled with stuff, and I couldn’t live with one of those cases with no 5.25" bays. There’s a module that was meant to hold 4 3.5" HDs and cool them with a fan, but the drives are now SSDs. Next is a Bluray drive, then a hub/memory card reader, and finally a SATA bay for quick swapping of hard drives. Since I tend to use HDs as removable storage, being able to easily pop them right in is a major timesaver. 

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 04/18/2020 at 18:55

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Yeah, when I was looking at cases for my current system, I was like: wait, when was the last time I used an opt ic al drive? I could definitely live without them. Of course then when I was installing, I was having some issues with installing W indows from USB and had to go diving around for my external DVD drive. The case does come with a two-drive 3.5" internal bay, but I’ve removed it to mount another fan (my PSU is fanless, and there would be zero airflow without that extra fan in the lower enclosure, which would probably be bad). There are also 3x 2.5" drive slots on the back of the motherboard tray, I’m using one at the moment.

The HTPC I posted above does a bit better on the obsolete hardware front. I’m not using the HDD in the front bay, but it has not just an optical drive, but an HD-DVD/ B lu- ray combo drive! It’s been ages since I used it, but it’s there. And helpfully obstructing the GPU fans is a PCI sound card (HT Omega Striker 7.1), so that I could get surround sound to my receiver (not sure that it’s necessary with this board, but it was with my last one, and it works, so why not).

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > facw 04/18/2020 at 19:05

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I’m thinking that I could easily pull the optical drive out of my HTPC. I haven’t had to install any software on it, and I have an Xbox One S to do 4K BD playback (as well as a literal stack of BD players, although they’re probably not 4K).

I did see a nice HTPC case on CL a few weeks back, but that’s when I was a little more concerned about buying food and keeping a roof over my head. I still have a gutted Yamaha receiver that I’ve been tempted to turn into a HTPC machine, but it would require a lot of tweaking to make everything work in it, and I don’t feel like putting in the time on that project right now. The receiver was a Goodwill bargain, and I found out why; it seems that the previous owner pulled the feet off the bottom, probably to fit it into a cabinet. I didn’t notice that and unintentionally fried it (or finished frying it since it wasn’t 100%). I’ve always been concerned about cooling on my computers, but never paid too much attention to it on the A/V setup, figuring that the engineers that designed the stuff had it figured out. I just never figured that someone would be so stupid as to bugger up all that hard work. I shouldn’t have been considering what I’ve seen people, including myself, do to mess up their cars...

TheRealBicycleBuck > facw 04/18/2020 at 19:16

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We’re cleaning up the office and I found a bunch of Zip disks which have our docs from grad school on them. I have two Zip drives in a box, so I’m hoping that one of them doesn’t have the click of death and I can recover all the data. If not, oh well.