Does Cable Management Matter?

Cr00zng said:

I just do cabling on the easiest way, be that front, or back; it's been serving me well for quite a few years:

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I'm not fully understanding your post except that you're happy with the temps.

hader said:

Cable management is important for one reason only; your airflow into your casing.

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I have to place a note to my previous comment. I saw the video where someone explained that cable management doesn't matter even if you block everything. True until a certain point. His test is the wrong one. He is using Furmark. This is a GPU stresstest. You can look at your CPU temp as much as you want it will be the same. In both cases as well the CPU as the GPU are using a heatpipe solution which dissipate it's heat to large surface of many aluminum plates. It can hold it's own without any fans. The test shown does not change so the results are the same. If they heatpipe/plates can handle their own heat dissipation nothing will change. You can block everything. It does not matter.

It becomes a different issue if the heatpipe/blades solution can't handle the heat anymore. Yes in this case fans are needed to cool things down. And if it does not do it quickly then it's ramping up the fan speeds. GPU card does have a advantage. Their surface area are much greater then a tower block onto the CPU. Those GPU card has grown through time from 1 to 2 or even 3 slot cards. The heatpipe/plates are getting bigger and there has to be room for 1,2 or 3 fans to cool things down. If you use normal speeds for the motherboard, CPU and GPU cable management is not needed. But if your are overclocking things seriously cable management and the right airflow in your system becomes a point to keep things tidy. No 28 pin flat cable running in front of a fan. Just using tyraps and pushing out of the way is also cable management.

It's now important which much cases which uses bling material like water-cooling with fluorescent water and multicolor fans and a transparent window to keep the room where the motherboard is sitting free of much of cables. So many cases has a separate chamber on the other side of the motherboard chamber to keep the motherboard area tidy with only cables surfacing to their connectors. It's just like Ghot showed us with his picture.

The choice of case is more important for the airflow then cable management. The designers do have solutions for that. I like cases where the user can choose. Some designer features are fixed for a reason. If I look at my Be Quiet Pure Base 600 case I can see what the designers intended. It has no window to look at the inside. (not needed. The case is sitting left of my monitor on my desk. So a left panel window has no use.) It has large 2 vertical small slots at the front as an air intake. At the bottom there is one filtered air outtake for my PSU. That's why the case is raised from the table by 2,5 cm. It has a plastic cover on top which I have raised by 1 cm to use it as an air intake also. In the case their are two fans which draw air from outside into my case. A big fan at back pushes all the air outside. The rest of the case front and sides are brushed aluminum. This case have 1 feature that has be gone; 2 5,25 drive bays for old-school things like a Blu-ray/DVD burner. Many cases don't have these anymore because it's place is been taken by a large 3 fan multicolor fan option. The whole front is one big air intake to be useful and to be visible.

Cr00zng said:

I just do cabling on the easiest way, be that front, or back; it's been serving me well for quite a few years:

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Nothing new here. We all reach those temperatures with no load. This had nothing to do with cable management. Not putting your system (overclocking) under real stress temperatures and temps are ramping up towards the shutdown temp of your CPU. Airflow and fans are important in this case. Under normal use? No.

Ghot said:

2009 actually.


The entire motherboard tray comes out the back, with, all the components still on the motherboard.
Just unhook the cables.
I can rebuild the entire comp in 15-20 mins.
100% aluminum too... acts as a natural heat sink.

I'm keeping this case till I die. ^^

Cooler Master ATCS 840 - Bjorn3D.com

Just when we thought, that an older style case could not be improved upon. We thought wrong. Cooler

bjorn3d.com

They don't make 'em like this anymore.
This case is from "back in the day when ships were wood and men were iron".

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Yup. That's why I got the ATCS 840 too, instead of a newer fancy schmansy windowed case. (I have to give credit to someone in this forum for helping me get my hands on this exquisite case. He knows who he is.) I was going to put the older X99 Work Station board in it but changed my mind. Decided to put my X299 board inside it instead. At the moment I have a test board running inside it. I mean, it's sooo easy to swap out boards with this thing! Alas, I have too much going on here on the home front to tackle the X299 job now so I'll be building that one some time this winter. I have to agree: They just don't make 'em like they used to. This case is going nowhere until I give up the ghot.

hader said:

Cable management is important for one reason only; your airflow into your casing.

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I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you on that. Working in a rat's nest of wires and cables can be frustrating. When properly managed cables are easier to trace and replace or reroute or simply locate. Yes, airflow is important but there are a number of reasons why good cable management is important. Having wires dangling in front of fans can be a recipe for disaster, for example (and I'm not referring to mere obstruction of air flow). Having them numbered or labeled can also help save time. Proper cable management comes with a safety factor and it can help to preserve the life of your PC. Apart from esthetics it has practical aspects in addition to maintaining good airflow.

As for the original post: I've seen your work and I know how you labored over your build. You built your PC for yourself and IMO you did a great job of it. On my ThermalTake Level 10 GT some might say it looks horrendous but once the cover is on nobody has to look at it. I know where each wire goes and even if not all the wires run parallel or form tidy little geometric figures they're secure. That's what matters. IF it looks good to you then it's good enough because a lot of us walked with you through that build and we know you took a very practical approach. In fact, it's one of the nicest looking aquariums I've seen in some time. lol (J/K)