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Adding cable management to my case

hat

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I've got some plans to add cable management to my case. First, here's 2 pics of plans I skectched on the case.





The first picture are the plans for the 24-pin atx power and the PCI-E power, which will be routed behind the motherboard tray.

In the second picture, I will cut away that box to make room for SATA data and power cables. There's enough room for the first drive on the top, but there's not for the middle drive. I plan to turn the drives around so the data and power cables are in front of the case, behind the front panel. The SATA cables will come through the circular hole above the oval hole. The power cables (along with the usb cable and case power switch, led etc cables) will come through that oval hole. Also, there are these screw things that hold the hdd cage holders in place. As you can tell, there's already metal tabs ther hold them in place. I plan to drill those out so the cage holders can actually be removed.
That should make my case pretty much clean on the inside.

Too bad it's 6am right now... I want to get started! 3 cheers for dremels and drills!
 

adcom32

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what case are you doing this to?
 

hat

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Damn... my tools aren't powerful enough. I tried to drill through the front panel and I was at it for like 2 minutes straight and still didn't punch one hole through it.

It's an Antec SOHO 1030B, the one in my specs.

I did manage to improve cable management a bit though. I figured out a better routing for the PCI-E cable, and it turns out that there's a small 1 1/4-1 1/2 inch hole on the optical drive bay that I routed sata power cables through.
 

Bo$$

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adcom32

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yeah like to see some pic.
 

hat

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Here's some after pics... I don't have any before.


 
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First of all, will you have room behind the MB tray once you are done cutting? If not, why bother?

You should be able to improve the air intake by cutting out the front grills. No one will see the openings, since they are behind the plastic front piece. Even if you put no fans there (I have an Antec case and front fans are too loud), unobstructed openings will improve your airflow. Even if you never get your cables out of the way, improving overall throughput will help a lot.

If you cannot practically cut openings in your MB tray you can get cable tie anchors and tie the cables against the MB tray. That will get them mostly out of the way.
 
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hat

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Yeah, there is room back there (I already have a mess of cables back there, they just don't have anywhere to go so it's just for slack). I'll try to cut out those front grills with my dremel tomorrow. I tried to ziptie a fan to one of them, but it just won't work—the hole placement doesn't fit right. The only way to get a fan there is to use those rediculous plastic fan shroud things... I hate those! Why can't they just drill holes in the front of the case that would allow you to screw a fan to it instead of using plastic fan shrouds...
 

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cut another 2 holes for the sata cable, TBH they are SUPER ugly and ruin all your hard work :D
 
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