Most of you guys
have known me for overclocking, building high power lasers, and occasionally
forum spamming. But over the years I’ve hardly posted pictures of my builds
anywhere, because I’ve always been somewhat ashamed of it. Cables are always
sticking out of everywhere, almost always too lazy to work on cable management
of any kind. However, very recently a good friend of mine posted a picture of
his custom build for a client, that’s when it hit me. I finally found the
inspiration to make the inside of my computer look nicer for a change.
PART ONE – Tools
Package comes FOUR individual tools.
First we’ll be looking at is the Double Ended Universal Molex Removal Tool.
To remove molex pins with a small ordinary phillips head screwdriver is pretty
simple, bend the two side pins in the molex header will come right off. However,
the problem is to aim it right, and get it out of the clear molex headers it'll
take me a good min or so, and it takes a lot longer to remove them from a
darker colored headers. With this tool, you can simply dock on the pin and pull
the wire. It saves the hassle of bending the pin back after removing it with
the screwdriver.
A side from the molex header remover, the
two pin Molex Mini Fit Pin Extraction Removal
Tool is a MUST have tool for cable modification of
any kind. It is
almost impassable to remove any of the 4/6/8/20/24 pin power cable for the motherboard,
video card cables as well as most of the modular power supply headers without
this handy tool. Same concept, jam it in and pull the cable.
Note: if the remover is in the right place, shouldn't
require Arnold Schwarzenegger's assistance to pull the cable out, or else remove
the tool and try it again.
Next up we have the 3/4 pin Fan header remover. Personally, I
don't find this as mandatory as the first two. Once again, after years of using
the micro Phillips head screwdriver, it's almost quicker
to remove them my old fashioned way, but instead of coming out one by one this
tool removes all 3 or 4 pins in the header and keeps in order.
Six-pin Aux power
connector? Haven't seen one of these for quite some time
now. It is very useful to remove SATA power connectors with this tool. I also
find this tool imperative when it comes to pushing cable into the SATA power
connecter socket without damaging the cable.
Pros:
Ø Lowest price as a package
Ø Beautifully made
Ø Easy to use
Ø Great seller-customer
communication
Cons:
Ø International shipping
Ø Six-pin Aux connector remover can
be bent very easily (see picture above)
Ø Slippery with sweaty hands
Final thoughts:
The tools are very handy, extremely easy to use, but could use some rubber
padding on the sides to provide more grips for sweaty hands. The first time I used
this set of tools it only took me less than 45min to sleeve a full set of SATA
power cable for Antec High Current Pro HCP-800/Platinum HCP-1000.
PART TWO – Sleeves - Axon XE-1
I've always been a fan of the combination
Red and Black, since my case is the Thermaltake New Soprano Black, I'd figured now is the perfect time to
sleeve the cables red.
The product speaks for itself, the most
gorgeous red. Since the sleeve is made out of PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate)
the elasticity, and long lasting guaranteed.
Aside from Candy Red, AXON offers options
such as Braided Black, Aqua Blue, UV Green, Yellow, White, Grey, and Dark Blue
in variety size options such as 2mm, 3mm, SATA rated ect.
Just like all other sleeves, most of the
time melting the opening is recommended or it'll just split like the picture
shown above.
Combining the right tool and the easy to use
sleeves, only took me no more than 45min from opening the package to finish.
Once again, this is the first time ever
sleeving any power cable from start to finish, please give me some feedbacks.
Pros:
Ø The most gorgeousred imaginable
Ø Very easy to install, once you
get a hang of it
Ø Elasticity
Cons:
Ø Comes in ellipse shaped
Ø Harder shell
Final thoughts:
Since this is the first time sleeving anything from binging to the end, it took
me a little while to realize what to do, but once I got the hang of it it's as simple
as pie. Unless you don't like pie.A lot of the time with the extra lighting attention
and photoshopping, what's shown in the picture by the sellers is different from
what you get in real life, but these sleeves comes in the most gorgeous red
I've ever seen. The current generation cable sleeving comes in ellipse shaped,
will require addition steps to make the sleeves fit right. The elasticity is
both pro and con, in many cases, the elasticity will hold the cable in place,
but to make the elasticity last, the sleeve itself is also make the sleeves
itself very hard.