Power Supply Cable Sleeving; Any Tips?

[Orange Furball]

Hello all,

I've been wanting to try this for a while, cable sleeving seems really cool. I finally decided to buy the supplies I need, so now as I await their arrival, I'm trying to plan this all out...

I have never done a modification of this kind before. I know it'll be hard and time consuming but the end result will hopefully be beautiful.

Has anyone here custom sleeved their power supply? I'm doing single wire sleeves of two alternating colors, orange and grey, with orange heatshrink and orange connectors (24 pin, molex, 8 pin, SATA, PCI-E, etc). The only tools I bought were an ATX pin removal tool and a Molex pin removal tool. I hope that's enough!

If you have any tips other than "Don't do it!" Please share them. I'm really nervous that I'm gonna waste some cash and a perfectly good power supply!

 

[hallux]

Do you have an old one you can use to test your process?

 

[Orange Furball]

Do you have an old one you can use to test your process?

An old power supply?

 

[hallux]

An old power supply?

Yes, that's what I mean

 

[Orange Furball]

Yes, that's what I mean

Yes I have a couple laying around

 

[Orange Furball]

Well here's the progress so far

The sleeving I'm using isnt the greatest, but I wasn't planning on it being the greatest. This is just me testing how well I can do it. So far my only problem is the heatshrink. I cut all the pieces to the same length yet still cant get them to line up.

The connector changing is easy, I bougjt all the tools from FrozenCPU.com. I wouldn't use a lighter on the heatshrink though, go to your local Harbor Freight or something and get a heat gun... That's why the molex heatshrink is a little blackened!

I'll probably have this done by tomorrow. What you see there took 45 minutes.

 

[wordoflife]

That's pretty cool. Not something I'd try doing, but still cool nonetheless.

 

[Orange Furball]

Done!



Not perfect but I think it's ok for a first try, plus the power supply was just a corsair cx500... Nothing fancy!


Edit: I just ordered some black heatshrink, a crimping tool and all new pins. I'm going to shorten the cables and redo this whole thing. All the final parts will be in Friday. I'll reuse the sleeving as it comes off really easily.

This little experiment has cost me almost $200 so far, better be worth it.