Just got a new Antec Sonata case. Looking at pics in various reviews, I've seen drive cables wired around the back of the 3.5-inch bays (much neater) or wrapped around the front (easier to access).

I'm thinking that wrapping them around the back would be better for cooling, no? Keeping them out of the airflow...

Curious as to which way you guys chose to wire your Sonatas, and any ins and outs of either method.

I recommend you to look at the pictures of Ralf Hutter's PC in the gallery section!

Ralf Hutter's case is a SLK3700. The Sonata has drives mounted 90 degrees from the way other cases normally do it (the shorter 3.5" side of the drive facing you when you open the side panel, instead of the long side). dennya wants to know if the cables should be inside (near the other non-removal panel) or outside (near you when you open the side panel).

Personally I would say on the inside. Slight improvement in airflow, and much neater. If you plan on swapping disks often you should get one of those removable 5 1/4" bays.

Sorry, didn't think of that... Might have served as some inspiration though.

Ralf Hutter's PC certainly does that And his audio system too. Though my audio system is quieter - too keep from waking the kids up

dennya, I mounted my HDDs with the cables at the back - not too difficult using the removable caddies and much neater - and as you mention better for the airflow.

Thanks guys... I got my system together and did indeed route the cables around the back. There was just enough extra room for the rounded cable slack to fit behind the drives. The only difficult part was connecting the power to the drives -- the power connectors didn't reach out of the bays, so I had to put the drives about 1/4 of the way in and reach around and hook them up. This case would be darn near perfect if the other side came off, but I'm guessing there were sound/ratting reasons that it doesn't.

Oh, the other drive-related snag... Why did they put "if you decide to mount a second fan, do it before you install the drives" at the very end of the instructions? So I got to put the 3.5 inch drives in twice.

One other problem I encountered -- the front 1394 port (the only front port I connected) didn't work. Luckily I remembered reading on this board that someone had encountered the + and - connectors being reversed, so I swapped them and prayed my iPod would't blow up. It didn't -- the 1394 port works fine now.

I like the system a lot. Even though I moved the innards from an Antec SX-830 case -- a much larger case -- it all works better because of the cable routing. It's MUCH quieter than that monstrosity, which had five Antec 80mm fans and a two-fan Enermax power supply. And it's about 10 degrees C cooler on the CPU, thanks to the better airflow.

I do hear a hum in the case, but I think it might be mostly my four hard drive motors. My second fan is an Antec Smartcool, which I couldn't connect to the Fan-only motors -- it wouldn't turn on. On the regular 5V connector it works fine, and hopefully its own temperature regulation features means I'm not getting a lot of extra noise from it.

I have mine at the front because I change them all the time. Mine are rounded cables, so I am not worried about airflow.

See this (which is out of date, I now have an Abit NF7-S v2.0, SLK800U, Silenx and more...)... review of the nf7-s as soon as I finish by current postgrad subject....





New setup is much cleaner air flow

Well, rounded cables can start interfering with airflow when you have four of them. I have four hard drives and two optical drives, plus the floppy and a four-port USB hub in the second 3.5" bay. A lot of cables...

here's mine... i'd definately go with back instead of front. i've switched out components a lot and always found it worth the extra effort to have a clean look.

Nice cable mgmt. Looks good.

Yeah, that's a very nice job of cable management!

The shorter optical drive at the top - Lite-On DVD-ROM?

Looks nery clean. Hope that your CPU fan is not at max speed...

Jan

thanks, i definately spent lots of time on it. it's nice to know that people appreciate a clean appearance.

yes, it's a lite-on dvd-rom drive.

umm... well... not all of the time... i am a silent freak, but i just can't turn down free performance. i have the sensor placed so it spins ~1200rpm on normal day-to-day tasks with a relatively cool ambient, but it definately revs up (~5500rpm ) under full load from my heavily overclocked cpu...

mmmmm.....very nice! You've definitely got the right idea. That's certainly one of the cleanest cases I've seen floating around the intranet for a long time, well done!

Now, just sleeve the ATX power cable and the powerlines going to your optical drives and you'll be done.

regarding the atx power cable, where are you referring to? because the cable actually already comes sleeved on my psu. you can actually barely see part of the sleeve on the part that connects to the board, but it just doesn't bend correctly having the sleeve go all the way to the end of the cable. and the little section of cable that goes up from the power supply actually has split loom around it now, but i haven't taken an updated picture.

do you really think sleeving the powerlines on the optical drives will clean up the appearance significantly? i guess i'd have to get some very thin nylon strech sleeving and heatshrink to do that one correctly...

thanks for the compliments, though it feels nice to have my work appreciated.

I guess the ATX cable is sort of an optical illusion. The first part is obviously sleeved but where it plugs into the board it looks like at least 4-5" is unsleeved.

I think the power connectors look better sleeved. I'm pretty sure I used 1/4" sleeve but it might have been 1/8", I can't remember.

If it's Flexo PET sleeve, it's 1/4". I have the 1/8", and it's just nice for fan cables. It might fit - they're expandable, after all - but it wouldn't look as nice. Which is the whole point

BTW did you use a hot knife for cutting it? I find that a good pair of scissors works great, especially if you're sealing the ends with heat shrink tubing.

I just cut it with scissors and sealed the cuts with a flame, then covered the ends with heatshrink once the sleeving was in place.

Wow! That's a fantastic job.

I just assembled my Sonata-based system, and although I spent what seemed a long time routing cables, mine isn't even close to what you've accomplished.

What's this "sleeve" material you folks have been discussing, and can anyone recommend a source?

I did use the cable wrap that's included with the "Dr. Cable" kit that came with the Seasonic Tornado that I used to replace the Antec True380S that came in the Sonata.

I think your hiding of extra cables up alongside the optical drive bays is the main difference between our approaches... I didn't even consider that possibility.

Thanks for sharing the photos!

The stuff I use is called "Flexo-pet" sleevng. I get mine from Fry's but here's a link to SVC.com's selection of Flexo-pet sleeving. Here' another source.

Being new to this art, I'm wondering about something... did you use a piece of heatshrink tubing that was large enough to fit over a Molex connector, and does it really shrink that much?

Or am I missing something? (probably likely )

No, I took off the molex first.

Ralf.... I knew I was missing something! Sheesh.

Thanks for the insight, and the source info.

Bob

Thank you, ciz28.

After looking at your pics, I flipped my drives and routed my cables roughly the way you did. My case is looking great and running 2C degrees cooler.


-- Tom