Ive had my PC for a few months now and everytime i open it up to clean it its just a horrid sight. I havent done any wor kwith the hardware (YET!) but when i do i dont feel like dealing with a jumble of cords lol. What are some ways to organize / manage cables and how to do it?

If you have a big case, chances are there's room behind the motherboard tray big enough to fit wires; that would be your best bet.

If not, I like to stuff them into unused Drive Bays so they're out of the way.

Cable ties and/or zip ties are good too if you want to just tie unused cables up and leave them at the very top(or bottom) of your case.

Yes, get some zip ties, they are cheap, and you can really clean up a case that way, and improve airflow. Also you could pick up rounded IDE cables and use those. I bought a bunch to put in all my computers last night when I ordered parts for a new system.

Or you could just switch all your drives to SATA since those dudes use real nice and neat cables, not those horrid ribbons.

k im gonna end up buying the rounded (E)IDE cables but im not sure. are all ide cables the same size?

Yes they are. Just make sure you don't get floppy cables. Floppy cables have 32 pins or something like that (correct me if I'm wrong) and IDE have 40 pins.

The cables come in different lengths and colors. You can also get cables with two connectors (for one device + motherboard connector) or three (two devices + motherboard).

Edit: If you do have a floppy drive, you can get a rounded cable for it too. I did that.

im guessing my hard drive is most likely ide since SCSI's are pretty expensive? and how do i make sure

edit : think its connected through SATA.... i think

If it's SATA, your hard drive already has a narrow cable. But that still leaves any IDE optical drives you have and floppy (if any).

its a fairly narrow yellow wire, although got any way to make sure its sata?

If it's not a big, wide ribbon cable then it's sata.

There's lots of neat ways to tidy your case.

Velcro straps and shrink wrap are very cool. There are also some plastic eyelets with sticky pads on the back you can attach to your chassis anywhere you'd like, then run zip ties through and run your cables along the sides of whatever you'd like. Any flat data cables usually have a round counterpart, but you can usually tidy these up by folding them or rolling them up and use zip ties.

There's plenty of other ways. I'm sure you'll find cool , innovative stuff if you look around enough and don't mind spending a little bit.

Sata HDD: http://www.hardavenue.com/reviews/wd250_3.jpg
Note the small slim connections.
http://www.computerbuffet.com/descri...sata-combo.jpg
The red cables on the bottom of the pic are the data cables. Top one is a molex>sata power adaptor-cable.

IDE HDD: http://www.ep.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/~ine...es/ide-HDD.jpg
The guy is holding the respective cable ends (power and data) underneath the HDD's connectors

SCSI: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...-Hdd-wscsi.jpg
Looks like IDE except the data connector is slightly different.

As mentioned above, there's many ways to tie up those loose cables -velcro, cable ties, tape, wires, pouches/sleeves, compact cables etc.

And one more to add, and only if you know you won't be changing anything at all for a long time, and you know whats what (i suggest to do this only on the psu cables, since its the easyst to identify each line) is to cut them to length (with a bit of slack in it) and rejoin them, tape it up with some electrical tape or heatshrinks.. Not for the faint hearted. ^-^

Clear the cables around the body of the case and/or out of the path of airflow/fans as much as possible to maximise cooling.

thnx for all the help, is there a difference between SATA cables and SATA ll cables?

"is there a difference between SATA cables and SATA ll cables?"

no.

You can also get modular psu's these days, where you can disconnect the power cables you dont use, except these can get quite expensive.

Regards,

Korrupt