 You just finished building your new gaming rig and it looks awesome, but there's one big problem. The cables are boring. Sure, keyboards come with generic sleeved cables these days and the majority of power supplies have moved on from ketchup and mustard to black, but where's the personality in that? How do you set your build apart from the rest out there? Well, don't worry, custom sleeve cables aren't for diehard enthusiasts anymore. And with a bit of know-how, you can make your own. Just be careful because we're not taking any responsibility if you accidentally fry your board, you just spent a couple hundred dollars on. But don't worry, right? It's gonna be fine. The G.Skill Trident Z Royal Elite Series represents peak DDR4 performance and is designed with a beautiful crystalline pattern across its polished aluminum heat spreader. Get yours today using the link below. This is one hell of a first world problem, but right now I'm stuck using this super long cable to plug my phone into my car and it looks awful. Not only is it plain, but the excess gets tangled up and I can't really close the chummy and it's just gross. So let's fix that. Typically, if you only need a single cable, you're probably better off ordering something from a custom site. But if you like DIY and like to have it your own way or are building an entire set, then building your own cables is a great way to go. If I'm honest, I've never done this before. The script says it's easy enough. You just add some paracord and some solder points, right? Yeah, technically. So are we just doing it? Yeah. Oh, sick. We're making a USB cable. It's your standard electrical tool, soldering iron, carbon filter, wire strippers and cutters, a heat gun and some wood or metal dowel. We'll explain those last two later. We've also got a pair of helping hands to help keep things in place, as well as, well, the script says standard lighter. Ours didn't have fuel, so this is what we've got. For materials, we've got some USB 2.0 cable, paracord sleeving, USB-C connectors and their housings, USB-A connectors and also their housings. So you always need this stuff over here, but for personalization, you can go for just about any color of paracord, heat shrink and tech flex. This nifty purple one right here is what I chose because I like it, but the options really are pretty much endless. We've got a few examples here today, but there are dozens, if not hundreds of different patterns available online. We'll decide on the heat shrink color and whether or not I want to add any tech flex later on. There are a few things to know when ordering your supplies. Primarily the size of everything. You can find thinner USB cable, which makes for an easier time sleeving, but you have to make sure that you have the right size and shrink ratio for your shrink wrap, or it just won't stay on. And if you're making a USB-C to USB-C cable, like I wanted to try and make today, you have to make sure you've got at least one end with a 5.1K ohm resistor on the CC1 and CC2 ports. This helps the host device make sense of the incoming signal when using USB-C connectors with USB 2 cables. So yeah, I guess our C to C connectors didn't arrive in time. I'll kind of show you exactly why we can't do it here. So this is the size of the pads we're dealing with. And the resistor that we have is, well, it's pretty much bigger than the connector. So I think you can see why that wouldn't work. So yeah, because of all of that, we'll be doing a classic USB-C to Type-A configuration today. By the way, if you guys love DIY stuff, make sure you're subscribed because Linus' DIYing his whole new house right now. It's gonna be sick. Well, I guess if we're doing Type-A, it doesn't solve my car problem. So I kind of want to just have a long one. Sure. How expensive is this stuff? Not very. Not very? This roll was probably 20 bucks for 50 feet or something like that. Oh, okay. That's not bad. Okay, so now that I have this, I need equal length paracord. Is that what I'm seeing? Correct. All right, so we just pull these strands out and that's how we're able to put our cable in, I guess. So I'm having a bit of trouble getting it in. I have just the tip. Do I just keep on going like this or is there an easier way to do it? So you want to fix the fray. So that's where the blowtorch comes in. Normally we'd use a lighter. Okay. Yeah, so you want to set that bad boy fire, but melt it. Oh my God. The way to melt it, it's a little too closed. Oh. Okay. Don't breathe that in. I feel like I made it worse. Yeah, I feel like you did too. Yeah, this definitely seems like a lighter job instead of a map gas job. Yeah, that's kind of why I was hoping for a lighter. Map gas wasn't working great. We're going to try just a touch of CA. Oh yeah, there we go. Way better. So this seems very doable for like one cable, but if you wanted to do like a 24 pin, how long would this take? Luckily with 24 pin, it's thinner. So the 18 gauge wire that we'll be working with when we do the PCIe connector later, it's not as hard. This is a thicker cable. So it takes a lot more effort to actually get everything all the way through. So there's a USB-C. Okay. Here's a USB-A. All right. This is a lot easier to solder because you just have to do these four channels here. Whereas this one, you need to do those four little points. These are helping hands. You don't need them, but they make your life a lot easier. So we do have some flux core solder, so you don't need it. But if you want for your solder joints to look good, I would recommend putting a little bit on there. So what the flux is doing is just preventing air from getting in and making your like solder joints all gross and corroded like. Yeah. So Ploof just brought this up and I had the same concern. When I was soldering these, the heat shrink that was on them moved back. And if they touch, your device is dead. So are we doing anything to fix that? Well, we could glue the whole thing. Oh, I'm down for that. Yeah, so I actually do this all the time and it's a good idea from Ploof to do it here. When you have just something that you soldered, you don't want to have the connection take all the strain. So if you just dab a bunch of hot glue on there, it's good. So yeah, it doesn't matter which cable goes to which one. You just have to make sure that on both sides, you do the same one. So we're going black, red, green, white, and we could do any permutation of those. Doesn't matter, just make sure it's the same on both sides or. Okay, so basically touch these two together. It makes it be continuity tester, easy. I have no clue which pins do which thing, but yeah. So ground is the whole housing to this pin. Yep. And then how? All right, yeah, we're just plugging it in. I need much finer tips to get in there. This seems like a fire hazard. So then you hold that part, all right. And we should just be able to plug your phone or your keyboard or whatever in. That's okay, I've done it before. As long as those are all wired, don't touch. Hey, look at that charging, it works. So normally what you can do at this point too, is you can like plug it into a laptop or something or your computer to make sure data transfer works as well. But I think we're good. I'm not concerned about that. Alex has got all those wires going. The only concern I have right now is the exposed wires there. So we're going to glue everything together before we heat shrink and put all the housing on. Oh, that'll do. So yeah, I'm quite happy with my little cable here, Colton. We don't sell cables like this on LTTstore.com, but we do sell cable ties and water bottles. Actually, you should get a water bottle. So, okay, so what we forgot to do is we forgot to show you how to Tech Flex stuff. And we also forgot to show you how to coil stuff if you want to coil. So what this is for is it's mostly aesthetic, but it also makes the cable a little thicker. Oh, so the Tech Flex is just like protection for your paracord. Yeah, it's like a protection. And some people like the kind of like sheen that it gives. Like I've got a few different kinds. This one's just black, I think. But then there's also a clear guy here. And then this is shimmer, or maybe this is the black and this is the shimmer. Yeah, this is the shimmer. Oh yeah, that looks really cool. Sleeving. Yeah, right? Too bad you don't want this on there, right? No. Okay, good. You basically just hold it with one thumb and then start wrapping it around like that. All right, easy. Yeah. Cool. Now we just give her with the heat gun? Yeah. One thing to note before you start, be careful. If you put too much heat, you can like damage the cable, first of all, but you can also just damage the exterior of the paracord. Or if you're using Tech Flex, it melts a lot easier than this stuff does. And so you want to always use the lowest heat on your heat gun when doing this, because it's really easy on high heat to just like basically destroy your cable or make it look really bad by giving this big dark black spot on it. Okay, so I was about to give her at 950 degrees. I would not do that. Don't do that. I would not do that. Also, this is an aluminum rod. It's going to get really hot really fast. So at this point, normally what you do is you would keep this like it is, and then you would let it sit for a few hours, ideally even overnight. And then you can remove the tape and the coil should basically retain its form. Okay, cool. Yeah, so we've got a few coils already made. And so once you're done, you end up with something kind of like this. Yeah, it doesn't spring. It just adds a little character to your cable. Some people like to like have the cable come out like an inch and then have a coil go across most of the keyboard. And then the cable comes out. Yeah. It looks pretty, but that's about it. I dig it. Yeah. So now that Alex has finished making his nice USB cable, Anthony is going to try his hand at making a PCIe connector, an extension for your power supply. Have you done this before, Anthony? No. Perfect. I haven't either, unlike the USB cables, which I've made plenty of, I haven't done any extensions for cables. I've been meaning to get into it. And so this is a good opportunity for both of us to learn. All right. So we've got 18 gauge wire, which should handle most graphics cards pretty comfortably. These are, okay, male and female connectors. Pretty nice. Just have them, yeah. We've got these terminals. These are the actual ends. These are basically what actually plugs into your graphics card. It's not this that plugs in. It's this. And this is connected directly to the wire inside this. Thankfully, we've got some crimpy boys here. So satisfying. Ooh, you're gonna have Jack Thorham's done every day. I've done ethernet runs before. Lots of ethernet runs. And let me tell you, those are the crimpers that don't have this ratcheting mechanism. Do not buy them. They need the ratchet. So I can't help but noticing that our wire is all black. And that's gonna be difficult to distinguish between the different wires. But the great thing about extension is that as long as your pins are all lined up properly, you don't have to worry about the pinout diagram for each power supply. They just go straight through. They're already set up properly. So you're just extending them. The bad thing about extensions though, is that they obviously take up more room in your case because there is more actual cable. So chances are low we're gonna fry something, right? But for this, we don't need to solder anything. So for some of you, this is probably gonna be easier. Are we going for more of an LTT orange for our para card this time around? So yeah, it should look a little bit better on the inside of your case if my estimation is correct. I like orange. So along with the crimpy boys here, we have wire cutters or side cutters actually. This here pin extraction tool, if we make a mistake with sliding those pins into these here connectors. We also have, where's the wire? Yeah, there it is. Wire strippers. And most importantly, we have a lighter. And the reason for that is heat shrink, which I'm sure we've already gone over, right? Yeah. So yeah, to start, we'll measure out our cable and sleeving for each terminal. We're just doing an eight pin connector, so we need eight wires. Always make sure to buy extra materials just in case you need them. We could easily screw up a wire or a terminal or even one of our connectors. So we bought extras of each. Like... Also make sure to give yourself some slack for cable management. So measure the general path you think you'll be taking along the back of your case, and then maybe add an inch on top of that. We're going to just push ours straight against our measuring tool like so, and give it a snip with the side cutters at the desired length. Then you do the same for your sleeving material. All right, there's eight, mostly equal lengths. So the next step is stripping the cables and attaching our terminals. You want to expose about three millimeters on each end, so measure and strip. If you want to be extra careful, you can mark with a knife or something sharp while you've got your ruler out. When you're choosing a wire stripper, make sure that the little detents in here that line up to different wire sizes actually match up with your wire. In this case, we've got from 32 gauge up to 20 gauge, but we need 18 gauge. This is just going to like destroy some of the cable. These are pretty awesome. They don't always work depending on your cable. I know I've tried mine with speaker wire and the shielding on that is just way too thick. But on something like this, if you just feed in a couple of millimeters and you give it a little... Check that out. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. It's super nice. Guess what? They connect. Oh my God. Unlimited power. So wait, we're just going to have a single piece of paracord with all of these in it? No, so you'll be sleeving each individual wire. Okay. So that you have individual strands on your extension. Okay. So yeah, push that through, strip it off. Well, you might want to measure and then cut to length. Screw measuring. Okay. So how much of the paracord should be covering this? It shouldn't be covering the terminal. It should be covering up until basically where the terminal meets the wire. Okay. So right about there. Yeah. So if I measure with another terminal, then that should theoretically... And then if the ends are frayed, you've got a lighter on hand so you can melt them up, but that looks okay. Well, one end looks... All right. The other end looks... Well, I mean, it looks kind of like the black that you'd normally get on the end of these. Let's see if it goes in. Nice. It clicked in. All right. Let's try the other end. Ah, yeah. Now from here, we need to make sure that we get it in the correct orientation. So actually probably what we could do, get them together like that. Oh damn. All right. That's our extension. We're done. We're done. No. One down, seven to go. Oh God. As it turns out, what we were doing before, we assumed that female would go to female, and we didn't really think to question that. And like male would go to male, but on second thought, I'm like, is there normally like a little thing sticking out of the male end of a PCI express connector? And like, I guess it makes sense because it's got to go so far into this one, right? Nothing really clicked. So when I said that I've never done this before, I haven't done this before. And we managed to get this male end in, specifically because I managed to mash that so badly with crimping. So crimp it once only on the four wings. So it should look very much like that. Flat on the back, chunky in the front. I got there in the end, but we had Tynan come in and, you know, kind of redo everything because I have other things to do today. TLDR, this, which this plugs into, is in fact male. So it's like a seahorse, I guess. I don't know. Anyway, it's reversed from what you'd think it is. Also, for those of you playing along at home, we discovered that if this little groove on the top of the male end here, specifically, the female doesn't have quite that same key. If that is pinched in any way, you're going to have a bad time. It's not going to lock into place. You might, it might actually like straight up not go in. So yeah, just pinch here. It's beautiful, Anthony. So your first one might look like this. Actually, you know what? If we had multiple different colors, we could just have this be a rainbow. You could, you could mismatch the lengths by on purpose in order to make yourself a nice aesthetic. I mean, this just looks like, I don't know, a giant Cheeto. Are you ready to test it, Anthony? Am I ready to test it? Hell yeah. Oh man. You know what would be a good way to test it? If we have a multimeter. One. Two. Three. Four. Eight. Okay. Six. Seven. One more, come on. We've gotten old. I think it was a 680. Okay. Good luck everybody. Oh, I got a flashing cursor. Uh oh. Now blank screen. No, it works. Whoa. Yes. But there's no keyboard detected. Oh, what a mess. I'm not happy with it. I wish I could go back and redo it, but this is what we're living with now. These connectors are very finicky. They're, they're simple enough to understand. They're simple enough to use. But if you don't have a little bit of practice getting them just right, you're going to end up wasting a lot of wire and other materials. Thankfully those materials are not very expensive. And if you can get them for, you know, relatively cheap and bulk, and presumably from the same supplier, so you don't have to pay multiple shipping costs, but it's fun and gratifying to sit down and actually make these cables look the way they do. And you can make them look however you want. And I think that's great, you know, learn how to do something new. The Drop PC38X gaming headset was built in collaboration with Sennheiser. It features an open back design based on the respected PC37X, but with some added enhancements. The retuned drivers deliver higher fidelity and better frequency response. The rated impedance is now 28 ohms for use with gaming controllers or other lower power devices. And the new Nipmesh headband means less heat retention and better comfort. It includes two sets of cables for either your PC or your console and two different ear pads, Nipmesh or Velour. Buy yours today and get $20 off a pair with code, drop this at the link down below. Do you make your own cables at home or have you been thinking of getting into it? Let us know in the comments below and make sure to check out our video on building a mechanical keyboard. That was a lot of fun too.