 In our very popular and not at all infamous series, The Workshop, we did an episode where we demonstrated that cable management, tucking away all your cables, in most cases, pun intended, has no tangible effect on performance or even cooling. So then, when we set out to do this cable management guide, sponsored by our buds over at CableMod, we figured, well hell, if deep down, it's just about the looks. Let's make sure it looks as good as it can. So here is how to cable manage like a pro. The first thing we needed was a test subject, so we borrowed our triple-headed VR project machine. It already looked reasonably clean from the front, but as for the backside, well, Ivan's excuse was, I was Russian. Now in fairness to him though, this machine has six hard drives, seven RGB fans with individual leads to their respective light controllers, and to make matters worse, its older style 900D chassis has no power supply shroud, so there is a visible rat's nest down at the bottom. To tame the overgrowth then, we'll need some tools. We recommend a pair of side cutters, a set of small and large zip ties, and some double-sided tape, and also some basic cable mesh or sleeving goes a long way. Next, you need to visualize. Remember guys, to have your wiring looking its best, you need to avoid any diagonal lines and try to minimize crossings. So you can't just start tucking things away without a clear end goal in your mind's eye. In fact, this is so important that if you're having trouble, I would legitimately suggest that you draw it out in paint if you need. Keeping in mind of course that due to small variances, it is likely that you'll end up having to make a few tweaks as you go. Next, assuming that you're working on a system that's already built, begin by yanking out the larger cables completely to get them out of the way and cleaning up the small ones with your small zip ties. You should use existing case crevices to hide these small cables, and you can also use that empty cavity behind where DVD drives used to go. Remember those? That's a good spot to hide the extra length of front I.O. cables. On the motherboard side, use memory slot lines to hide your runs, and then while you're at all of this, keep in mind where your thicker runs will go. You can use those to hide your thin runs later on. Planning. Pro tip number one, leave the SATA cables for last because the drive side connectors in particular are really flimsy, and they're surprisingly easy to accidentally break off while you're running or tightening something else. Pro tip number two, sometimes rotating a fan can give its cable a cleaner run. Pro tip number three, label your fan connectors. This makes it easier to reconfigure your airflow and your RGB patterns once it's not obvious anymore which cables belong to which fan. Pro tip number four, if you have a modular power supply, hide your unsightly power supply side modular cables in the cavity behind the PSU. Tip number five, if you can't hide a thin cable run, some basic wire mesh makes it look a lot more professional and flattening the run beforehand helps to avoid snake meal mesh bulbs. Tip number six, replace your existing double-sided tape on things like your RGB controllers. It might still be residually sticky, but it is much more likely to fall off after a reapplication than not. Hot glue is also a pretty good one here. If you've been following along so far, you're well on your way, but you've probably run into some situations where you have no choice but to commit a cardinal sin. Sometimes your stock cables are simply too short to avoid diagonal lines. Oh, what will you do? So one way around this is to use the area between the motherboard and the case's motherboard tray wherever possible. This technique is also popular for making the front I.O. cables look cleaner on the motherboard side. Just make sure you don't put anything too bulky in there. Flex is not good for your motherboard. As for your graphics card, you've got a couple of options here. You can run the power cables from the top down for a little bit of sag support, or you can run them from underneath for a cleaner look. We opted for the straight down method since the extra two PCI Express power pins ended up looking really ugly otherwise. There is also the new option, by the way, of using a vertical GPU adapter, but these are for single card setups only. They are somewhat reliant on case compatibility and the last issue, our machine has more than one GPU. So a time lapse later and using all the tips that we just gave you, you can behold then the fruits of our labor. Our system looks way cleaner both from the front and from the back. So thanks for watching- no actually I'm just kidding. This wouldn't be much of an ultimate guide without some custom cables from CableMod, would it? Now for many people, only front side looks are important. So CableMod extensions are a quick, easy, and relatively inexpensive way to spruce up your machines looks. You only need a few of them to make a noticeable difference to the look of most machines. For others though, extensions are about like putting a park bench on a civic and calling it a spoiler. So for them, there are the pre-packaged CableMod replacement kits, which are available in a variety of colors and patterns and for pretty much every modular power supply model under the sun. We are going one step further. CableMod's ultimate offering, custom length and colored cables. So to kit out your system, the first thing you need to do is measure your run lengths, but you can't just do this any old way, like don't use a string. We actually recommend using a wire, so we cut a 12 gauge wire because this helps simulate the way that the custom cables will actually bend once they're installed. We're also going to try to address the clump of PCI Express cables by the power supply by calculating which cables we can run hidden behind others. It's important to get each length of run exactly right and make sure you're checking exactly the terminal that you'll use, because if you measure them all to the same one, the end result might not align as perfectly as you might like. With our lengths in hand, we dialed them into the configurator, which allows details like the number of pre-installed combs and distance between SATA connectors, and then about a week later our pro cables with thicker wires and pre-installed combs arrived. When you're hooking these up, we actually suggest pre-bending the cables into the desired shape before you install them. It helps more than you might think. Then, right, last but not least, we mentioned cable combs, but we should probably explain those. Cable combs can be used not only to keep your individually sleeved wires apart, but to ensure that parallel runs are indeed parallel and they stay there. Okay, then, so since all the cables were pre-made to length, installing them was an absolute breeze, and this is our real end result. So as you can see, the front looks cleaner-er, the clump on the bottom is minimized, and then the biggest difference is on the back, especially when you look at the before and after. I mean, it went from something that we'd really rather hide to something we'd actually want to show off. I mean, maybe that's the next trend in computer cases, Windows on both sides. Oh wait, they've actually been doing that. So thanks for watching, guys. 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