Cable management - Does it impact cooling performance?

[nicklmg]

Amazon: http://geni.us/1h7o

 

Yes, good cable management does looks awesome. But does it actually increase the efficiency of your CPU or GPU cooler?

 

 

 

[adams]

Cool!

 

Spoiler

it does not impact cooling performance

 

[KaboomOrange]

Awesome 

[iamdarkyoshi]

y u do dis

Spoiler

I am actually really surprised at the outcome...

[Lethal Seraph]

Not a whole lot of difference if all components are 'new' compared to one with dust covered.

[AlTech]

@nicklmg Call me paranoid, but I swear I've seen this before on LTT forums.

 

Also, it's quite obvious LTT is running out of video ideas.

 

[iamdarkyoshi]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

@nicklmg Call me paranoid, but I swear I've seen this before on LTT forums.

 

Also, it's quite obvious LTT is running out of video ideas.

 

Or they want to do things that are silly and hilarious

[Syntaxvgm]

Should have went old school and put a bunch of IDE cables in there, that's where the 'myth' or 'exaggeration' started, that actually affected things back then, especially in the days of smaller heatsinks and 80mm fans. Folding aside IDE cables in from did make a bit of difference sometimes. 

[Syntaxvgm]

10 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

@nicklmg Call me paranoid, but I swear I've seen this before on LTT forums.

 

Also, it's quite obvious LTT is running out of video ideas.

 

Ah well I actually think all things considered recently they've been getting some pretty good ideas. I mean yea there's bound to be a few where they were filling time, I mean they make a video a day, but some of these recently have been outside the box. Better imo than last 'hardware slump', the time between interesting shit like new gpus, where they were still in the house-office. I mean you can only do so many how-to build logs 

[Fgtfv567]

First, what the hell is going on on the top left corner? It's like there's some type of screen tearing in a youtube video

Second, Luke mentioned cable routing needing to be crucial in a node 202 or his bomb case. Why not do that? Why not do a Pt.2 in an ITX case like the node 202, that might get some better results

[Syntaxvgm]

Just now, Fgtfv567 said:

First, what the hell is going on on the top left corner? It's like there's some type of screen tearing in a youtube video

Second, Luke mentioned cable routing needing to be crucial in a node 202 or his bomb case. Why not do that? Why not do a Pt.2 in an ITX case like the node 202, that might get some better results

yea no if my 380t had any sort of cable routing, or drive cages facing the same way, then maybe I could have lower temps

[Fgtfv567]

14 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

@nicklmg Call me paranoid, but I swear I've seen this before on LTT forums.

 

Also, it's quite obvious LTT is running out of video ideas.

 

Linus has also done this video before on NCIX tech tips a while ago, just not with all of that stuff stuffed into the case though...

 

 

[Syntaxvgm]

1 minute ago, Fgtfv567 said:

Linus has also done this video before on NCIX tech tips a while ago, just not with all of that stuff stuffed into the case though...

 

 

Ah but it was luke this time! 

What I'm saying is it's acceptable if they do another oil cooled system, given it's Brandon or something

[nicklmg]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Also, it's quite obvious LTT is running out of video ideas.

 

I see a "boy who cried running out of ideas" around here about every 3 months... Yet we keep making better and better videos and the audience keeps growing

Our content is about answering a question - and while many of our viewers are well beyond the understanding level where these questions are relevant, many new viewers could find content like this extremely useful, because they simply don't have the experience themselves.

Not every video will appeal to everyone, and not every video will be Scrapyard Wars (or videos of similar quality and entertainment value). But trust me, we are FAR from running out of ideas.

[agent_x007]

"Few" things :
1) Not all users have "newish" cases. Some of us can use a crappy/used case, because CPU/GPU or a SSD are more important than it.
Try using one from any Scrapyard wars.
2) More fans = more focus/directed Air flow = less problems when something is trying to block it.
3) U should check if Fans were still running when CPU temps go up (blocking fans from spinning should be considered as cheating in this case)
4) GPU Boost 2.0 will prevent GPU from going above set temperature (throttling).
I think Luke did video about it not too long ago...
So : Did U guys let Boost 2.0 go above 82C (or switch it altogether before testing) ?
5) Should have include few HDD's in front of the front facing fan (since HDD and it's cables will be blocking airflow in 99% of all cases [pun not intended]).

[thevicparable]

As if I needed another reason so sit on my ass and not spend money rectifying my cable management situation.

[gonvres]

I think this does answer some questions. While I did the best with what I had, some older cases just don't have many pockets to tuck away the cables. Good to see it makes no real difference.

 

 

 

[Monkey Dust]

4 hours ago, Syntaxvgm said:

Should have went old school and put a bunch of IDE cables in there, that's where the 'myth' or 'exaggeration' started, that actually affected things back then, especially in the days of smaller heatsinks and 80mm fans. Folding aside IDE cables in from did make a bit of difference sometimes. 

We also have better fans that can generate higher static pressure too.

 

That said I don't recall cooling problems when I had a system with IDE cables, three of the bloody things. And cases didn't consider cable management back then, not that there was a lot you could do to manage IDE cables anyway.

[The Knome]

5 hours ago, Syntaxvgm said:

Should have went old school and put a bunch of IDE cables in there, that's where the 'myth' or 'exaggeration' started, that actually affected things back then, especially in the days of smaller heatsinks and 80mm fans. Folding aside IDE cables in from did make a bit of difference sometimes. 

You beat me to it.

That and IDE cables were a pig to organise in any good way.
Remember when people started producing rounded ones? rather than the ribbon?

I do remember getting a decent drop in temps way back when from installing those, but now all the cables are skinny, space available is huge, and we have parts that run at a fraction of the power and heat they used to. Unless you're on AMD :p 
(I say that as an AMD user  ) 

[amp88]

It would have been nice to get some performance benchmarks (at least for the setup with good cable management and the extremely blocked up setup), which would have let us know if performance was impacted. If you have a look at this HardOCP review of a GTX 980 SLI setup, note the following paragraphs:

 

Quote

We noticed that when the GPUs would hit 80c the thermal throttling in SLI would occur and drop the clock speed from the boost clock. We know that it is strictly temperature that is causing this clock throttling in SLI because we also tried a test by just raising the fans to 100% fan speed. When we did this the in-game clock frequency jumped to 1266MHz consistently without dropping.

 

So this goes to prove, the reference cooler on the reference GTX 980 cards is causing thermal throttling. Raising the fan speed manually does fix the issue and provides a clock speed above the boost clock in games. So if you want a fast and easy overclock, just raise the fan speeds.

 

[stconquest]

52 minutes ago, The Knome said:

You beat me to it.

That and IDE cables were a pig to organise in any good way.
Remember when people started producing rounded ones? rather than the ribbon?

I do remember getting a decent drop in temps way back when from installing those, but now all the cables are skinny, space available is huge, and we have parts that run at a fraction of the power and heat they used to. Unless you're on AMD
(I say that as an AMD user  ) 

I used to twist those IDE cables into a cylindrical shape to keep it neat.  Being gentle of course.

[topsu]

Obviously the temperature won't change because fan rpm curve will just increase fan speed... You should have checked fan rpms

[MobiFix]

WHere's todays vessel video tho?

[B0gdan13]

10 hours ago, nicklmg said:

Amazon: http://geni.us/1h7o

 

Yes, good cable management does looks awesome. But does it actually increase the efficiency of your CPU or GPU cooler?

 

 

 

Cable management before/after ! And yes , was very dusty !

[brandishwar]

Cable management has been a huge, huge deal from the days of ribbon cables when you really couldn't do much for it. You were largely at the mercy of the ribbons unless you had cables long enough that you could fold them (literally) out of the way. I remember an article in -- I want to say -- PC Magazine or PC Gamer of computer builders using origami techniques to fold IDE cables out of the way to leave as much open airflow as possible for Pentium III and Pentium 4 processors.

 

So when round floppy and IDE cables started becoming available, cable management became a huge deal, especially since the wide release of these cables coincided with the Pentium 4. That monster of a processor ran so hot that it used a pure copper heatsink bolted through the mainboard into the mainboard tray. As such, cable management became a major concern because you needed unobstructed airflow to the processor fan, or at least as unobstructed as you could get.

 

As such chassis design started also becoming a bit more of a concern. You could probably mount a Pentium 4 into a modern chassis with lackluster cable management and not have any major problem, since chassis today aren't designed with only one intake and one exhaust (i.e. the power supply). They're designed with ventilation in mind. The first chassis I bought was a mid-tower baby AT. There was only one intake and no active exhaust -- the power supply was the exhaust. And its intake was a single 80mm fan if I remember correctly. Today you have chassis with several intake options and several exhaust options. 120mm fans are now the norm as well, which can move significantly more air compared to 80mm fans -- on average I think like 2.5x the airflow with generally less noise. And you wonder why you had to go to significant lengths to actually affect temperatures?

 

And let's not forget modular power supplies! Seriously those are a godsend when it comes to cabling because you're not having to tie the unused cables together and stuff them into the 5-1/4" drive bays or find some other option to get them out of the way.

 

If you really want to see how much of a deal cable management becomes, find a chassis that doesn't have that great of cable management capability, where you had to go to weird extremes to actually get cabling out of the way. This means you'd need to look for a chassis that is... probably approaching 10 years old. Mount a modern system into that, building it the way that most beginner PC builders would. You'll also need to use a non-modular power supply. Try cable managing that and you'll see how easy you have it and how important cable management actually is.