Cable Rounding works!

[Szech]

I rounded my floppy cable using duct tape, and after being warned against it here, I didn't finish rounding my other cables until a few days ago. Well, I got some zip ties, I finished rounding the other cables, and OMG! When my computer booted up, it was a lot quieter, and when I was running full load, the heatsink wasn't even warm! It's kind of given, though, because I had full tower sized cables in my mid tower case, blocking off the air and all. I thought it would help, but I didn't expect it to help that much.

[Barney]

I rounded my cables too,a few days ago.And the temp went from 29c to 24c !I have some cheapo midi case (quite small for a midicase,40cm high).And I have the sides on.Wow,24 degrees celcius!And I'm not finished with cooling my computer,I think I'll get it to 20c.Btw,this temperature is when cracking RC5 (100% cpu load)

Ronald

[This message has been edited by Barney (edited 10-15-2000).]

[brandon184]

All of my cables are pipelined around the inside of my PC.. It greatly reduces heat if you put some thought into fan placement...

[mmj]

80-wire cables are designed to run side-by-side so that the ground lead in every second wire magnetically shields the signal wires in between. If you round the cable, electromagnetic radiation might raise the error rate in these cables, slowing performance, and the chance on an uncorrectable error may be slightly higher. If you must round your cables, don't run them exactly parallel, but spiral them around each other (if you see what I mean).

Of course, this is just my opinion and there is probably no measurable performance drop.

[Szech]

Wow, this was... a while ago.

You are right mmj, in that putting cables near each other creates crosstalk. I remember back in my high school network admin days, my coworkers and I used to trash the Farallon cables (use them as whips, make nooses, tie stuff together) because they were two pair untwisted, and gave crappy performance compared to four pair twisted Cat5 cables.

However, with the short distances that most drive cables are running, I doubt that it would ever build up to a problematic level. Twisting it would only help prevent crosstalk if you could calculate how far apart the twists have to be to keep the electrons running on the outside edge of the wire. But twisting is still handy, because the cables in the center bulge out if you don't.

[King_Kooba_Fantastique]

What exactly is meant by rounding, anyone have some pics ? http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif.

KKF.

[daverme]

Ditto; please explain "rounding" to we of the ignorant masses ... Dave

[Richard_Cranium72]

Basically it is routing your flat cables to allow more air flow to the hot areas of the computer.

Rounding is the physical separation of the flat cables using a razor and tape to secure them into a round shape.

Like said before , the Hi-Performance ata/66 or ata/100 cables have double grounding, splitting these cables may have adverse affects.

DrVette

[JimG]

For those who feel the need to round their cables: http://sysopt.earthweb.com/articles/cabround/index.html

Edit: Some pics of cases using rounded cables - http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/011347.html

[This message has been edited by JimG (edited 02-10-2001).]

[randy48]

the easiest way to round them without taking a chance of ruining the cables is to warm them so they're more flexible and roll them up. Then either tape them, use tie-wraps, or get some split-cable tubing like used under the hood of your car.