Sedirex Suck it up.... He spoke the truth. Why don’t people take pride in building a system anymore? My cable management is on par with Jay. It makes it easier to diagnose if a problem occurs vs a rats nest that can take a long time to dissect. Do it right from the start. Spend time with the cables and give them a girls name. 🤣
I've been building PC's since the mid 90's, and never cared about the look at all. After watching Jays vids for about 2 years, now i have a color-themed (black/red) PC with full sidepanel window, AiO liquid cooling, LED fans and properly managed sleeved cables. Thx Jay, you are awesome :)
Was about to post the same thing. Been building PCs for over 20 years, never cared about the cable management. Planning on a new build (with this same case no less!), and this video was very helpful to me. After this will be untangling the spiderweb of wires behind my desk. eeep!
We never cared because how the hell did you manage IDE cables in those old cases? The best we could do was those "round" ones. Never mind routing behind the motherboard!
Watched this video last night with confidence that I can finally manage my cables properly. Today I tore down my system and redid everything. The cable management is worse than before lol back to the drawing board. Hats off to those with cable management patience 👏
Cheap trick for mock-up: use the twist ties that usually come with builds as temporary cable ties. Easy to remove and re-use, then once everything is in place, remove and replace each twist tie with a Zip Tie.
I wouldn't reccomend that as a lot of people will have it all done and just get lazy and not replace them. Which then leaves metal wires in the case. Not great...
Surprised your comment isn't anchored to the top. It's a must-do if a builder doesn't want snipped plastic pieces all over the place. Used to do that with old school stereo systems, and continued the technique with computer builds.
for SATA power cables in your case, I'd do first cable for 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th and the second cable for 2nd, 4th, 6th and 8th HDD so you dont need to make a loop
I don't think that'll work. That would force him to bend the cables around the in-between HDDs (around HDD 2 in case of 1 and 3 being connected and so on), and I don't think those flat cables are gonna bend that easily.
Nawar El Sabaa I see what u mean, but they do work, they will bend easily (easier than shown on video even) and I think its better protected cables. bending the way Jay did is fine anyway.
@@nawarelsabaa Well, it's pretty easy to split the plastic of the flat cable to make them easier to make more like a square of cable on this short distance and wont really affect the look.
I think he split the power connections and make "the loops" couse the side's for raid....? Correct me if I am wrong, but that is the only logic I saw. P.S. It really grinded my gears when I saw that "ponytail" sata's :D
Cable management in a nutshell: Planning, some trial and error, finishing. Rarely does it get finished off on the first attempt. Unless you've used the same case multiple times, it's just the way it is. So worth it, though, in the end. Nice tutorial, Jay.
I...I just realized that I don't use my front panel HD audio jacks but I took great care in routing the cable properly, plugging it in, and managing the excess length when I could have just... *TUCKED IT INTO THE BACK WITHOUT PLUGGING IT IN.* Well, live and learn.
Those connectors are occasionally useful for guests. Even if you are not going to use them now, I follow the logic of "Make it available" so later on if you need another audio connector you're not looking like a buffoon because you neglected to have it available to you.
I was reusing my old case and I found one cable sticking out that had some wires out of their plug. I concluded that it hasn't worked before anyways so I probably don't need to plug it in as I never used it. I then unplugged it from old motherboard and read - HD audio :D
I didnt like how the actual video based on the title didnt start until after 6min in... BUT... after the cable management started, it was a perfect/amazing diy video and I thank you! I have 2 or 3 pc building youtubers I watch and this was by far the best of this topic!
@JayzTwoCents, Just a suggestion from experience: If you connect the MB SATA to the top 4 drives and the RAID controller to the bottom 4, the lengths will work out better. Reason, the MB SATA connectors are at the front of the MB and thus closer to the bays so the cables can reach the top drives. The RAID controller will be a short card commonly and you will need the length from the lower drives to reach the SATA RAID connectors. Connecting the MB SATA cables to the bottom drives wastes the added length you will need later.
I'm quite late into watching this video (out of interest to see what people have to say about cable management)... here's my $0.02. You have a fantastic vertical arrangement of 8 hard drives... and you have two strips of 4x SATA power cables... One improvement on cable management is to skip a hard drive between SATA connections on the same cable, or one cable deals with hard drives in odd numbered slots, the other cable deals with hard drives in even numbered slots. In other words, for your build, the first 4x SATA power cable is connected to hard drives 1, 3, 5 and 7; the second 4x SATA power cable is connected to hard drives 2, 4, 6 and 8. That way you don't have to fold the power cables to tamp them down. With flat cables, they'll look like a braid... aesthetically it may or may not be everybody's cup of tea, unless you have a solid back cover, which means who really cares?
petabyte project is not an unraid but I think jayz server will be. It is easy to setup and use. But I hope he is not buying a raid controller, he needs a HBA or dumb sata controller for unraid.
Hey man, just wanted to say I'm only a recent subscriber - know this probably won't be seen, but just wanted to say I love the channel and the way you explain things in your videos in a really chill way. I've been saving for some 12 months after moving overseas, so i've been watching to try and get my head around some things because it's been YEARS since I've built a PC. Always looking forward to new content, so I check it out every day. Hope the studio changes keep rolling well!
Jay, you should talk with a case manufacturer and try to get them to do a collab and create what you think would be the ultimate cable-management case. Maybe something like hollow rails or spaced case covers to run the cables *inside* the case itself or whatever, I think you'd come up with something really cool.
Yep I've gone through many a case asking myself why don't the manufacturers of cases think about this in their design. Having said that, this box is one of the better ones I've seen. Thanks for the suggestion. 👍
Thank you good sir, all I ever get is my cable management is horrid but no "this is how you do it" THIS explains more in about 10 minutes than years of everyone giving me poor reviews on management instead of SHOWING me how to do it properly
Very helpful. I have to install 6 drives in my upgrade build and now I have a good idea of how to manage them. The best trick I gathered in this video is the zip tie the cable in bundels. Thanks for that jay.
Jay, one thing I’ve done with my builds having multiple HDDs is to alternate every other HDD with the SATA power. It will eliminate the loops and still create a nice smooth appearance. Something about the loops has always bugged me...
Honestly, didn't think I would learn much from this video (even though I'm no professional by any means), but this was an extremely helpful video. Thank you so much for taking the time to make this and show us how it should always be done.
I used a Ryzen for a similiar build (just with an R5) and believe it is a better choice. (x1800, 32GB ECC memory, 10x 8TB drives, 2x250GB SSD for boot, 2x 512GB Nvme drives for cache).
ossme what are your temps under load ? I’m actually building a custom pc from ground up at the moment, went with r5 2600 and evga gtx 1070, have yet to put it all together though. I’m curious to hear how your setup is running temp wise
I literally just finished my new build less than an hour ago. I came over to my phone and saw this now. My cable management was a mess. I really needed this about 12 hours ago.
Just started work the other day on a gaming build that uses this case, and I found that placing the rig on a towel makes it easier to spin around if I need to switch sides quickly and safely.
+JayzTwoCents And try to separate the power cables as much you can from data cables. Power cables can have interference on data cables. Another good logic is, try to bend the cables as *less* you can. This is even more important on data cables then power cables.
I'm building a brand new home media server right now in exactly the same case, using the exact same Seagate 10TB drives, minus the GPU ! Keep up the good work Jay.
Very clean work Jay, congrats. As a marine electronics engineer I have done quite a few installations of navigation equipment onboard ships, dealing with a mountain of cables each time thus I can tell how neat your cable management is.
At 8:50 ish where the fan header on the define 7 is at the top cables should route correctly to the right and down. I hope so I just bought one. Video was helpful thanx Jay.
I configure servers/network equipment for a living and I would never recommend using an Intel raid controller for anything you care about. Get a newer Adaptec or LSI card and you'll be much better off. We've had too many speed/reliability issues with RST Raid for me to recommend them. If I could pull them all out of production, I would. Edit: Also cringing a bit at the drive setup but you dont do it every day so i wont hate, just dying a little inside without a hotswap backplane
I think its because it needs direct passthrough to run unRAID. You don't want to use a proper hardware raid controller (well the features at least) . You want a controller using IT mode.
He's using it as a "workstation" though. How would he pass the physical disks through? HyperV at least doesnt really let you do that, I think Virtualbox might but there's no way in hell i'd run a server in Virtualbox (had a half broke WDS once because of that) EDIT: Also you can get a controller that runs JBOD mode for something like that, there are plenty of those. They're called HBAs.
No, i *think" he's planning on using unRAID for the OS, and creating a passthrough VM using the GPU similar to what Linus did. Ideally you would use a HBA set to IT mode, or a flashed raid controller like the LSI 9211 (which is what i use). I don't think JBOD is the same. The unRAID OS needs bare metal access to the disks without the raid controller doing its thing. This enables proper SMART reporting etc. Google unRAID, you might find it interesting if you've never heard of it
I wish I would have seen this earlier I just built my first pc and from the front where the window is all the cables are hidden but... the back side isn’t so beautiful my cables are a tangled mess and I played hell getting the lid on
One of the best purchases I ever made was a roll of quality double-sided velcro strip, the same kind that comes with the Fractal case. Cut them a little bit longer than you think you'll need, do your cable management without needing to commit to any specific layout, then trim off the excess so they take up minimum space. Zip ties are probably the tightest fit tight and do the job damn well, but single time use and might have you cutting cables if you're rushing it or being plain careless.
A trick I've used for many drives in a stack is to power then up as drive 1,3,5,7 and 2,4,6,8 that way the power cable isnt bent over each drive and helps space things out. Also, I don't see any 90 degree sata cables being used. getting some 90 left and 90 right cabled would help flatten down all the data looms coming off those drives. And a question about the case, do the drives come out from the front side of the case or do you have to remove the entire sata power/data looms to get a drive out?
I've actually had problems with the connectors on the cables breaking before the connectors on the drive breaking... not to say I'm not careful when installing or servicing them. Jay's recommendations on this point are still valid.
I was about to write the same thing, cable managed many hard drives quite violently and not a single connector failed, didnt even think about that being an issue.
Never broke one too...and I am constantly changing drives or plug in new ones to take stuff to friends or so. In the worst case scenario, I end up needing to replace the sata cables due to the excess bending.
Awesome video Jay. Just built a PC tonight for a friend and while my cable management had gotten better with each build this still helped give me some good ideas. Now I want to redo my main rigs cables.
I recommend going with MLC NAND SSDs for the cache, do not trust TLC that has only a tiny fraction of the write endurance of MLC. For caching, spend an extra 20-40% but get an SSD that can handle 5-8PB of writes over its life as compared to 200-300TB of writes from a TLC drive. Furthermore, you will get more consistent performance with MLC.
That exact thing happened to me today. Took forever to troubleshoot too, because the PSU was pumping enough power to turn the RAM LEDs on, but nothing more.
Fabijan Rehorić // Bingo! Always test-run before building. Since I usually work with SFF cases, test-runs have become an absolute must. My first SFF build I didn't test-run, had to tear it down to reseat the CPU and only then it worked.
I tend to use small velcro ties when organising where my cables are going to go. Then once I have everything where I want it I zip tie them then remove the velcro ones, that way the cables stay in the same place. I find this is easier than constantly cutting and retying zip ties as you change positions.
Definitely some clean work! I too get obsessive with my cable management after building a few thousand systems haha. Heck, it takes me longer to cable manage than it does to assemble! One thing I've done in the past with tons of hard drives, to keep the sata power cables at equal lengths, is to alternate power from one cable to the next. Therefor keeping the base length nearly identical and shortening the extra loop length between drives. Makes for a cool effect too! Occasionally I have also removed the sata power plugs and re connected them at exact lengths to each drive. SUUUUPER clean! Man I miss building systems!
20:47 "That's better cable-managed than some systems I've seen that have 1 hard drive." *sigh* i have an m.2 and this thing is more cable managed than mine
I have an m.2 too, and i do not see the drives as problem, but the thing is that case fans and their cables take the mess to another level... spent 3 hours yesterday to try and better manage the cables, and that was a moderate success. Though if i had hard drives, i'd be more screwed than i already am.
@JayzTwoCents From my experience - when I do builds with multiple HDDs it often works better (and nicer) to use one SATA power cable for every other drive (1-3-5-7) and the other for the rest (2-4-6-8). Creates less loops/slacks and put less strain on the cable itself. The length between SATA power connectors on the cable was never a problem.
Then the loops just get in the way of the next set of alternating connectors. The way he did it is just fine plsu if anything goes wrong with a drive's connection, he can easily see which drive and replace it easier etc. Just my 2 cents.
@@brohvakiindova4452 wouldn't change the fact that the cable would still be in the way. There is no way around it. You either make the loops. Or have a cable underneath another cable. Sure it'll work. But what's the point.
Why are you not using a SAS controller and SAS cables? You can connect 4 SATA drives with just one cable. Besides, there are no good SATA controller cards out there, that I would want to trust my data with. Go with something like an Avago 9361-16i. Additional benefit: You don't need to split the hard drives between onboard controller and external controller.
Sebastian Schrader I am new to enterprise hardware and I am planning an unraid server inside a 12 hot-swap rosewill server case. My question is which sas card works best with unraid?
I have no experience with unRAID, but because it's just Linux, I assume anything that works well with Linux, will work well with unRAID, if they provide a decent Kernel with all necessary drivers/modules, which I assume they do, if they provide storage software. In my experience LSI (now Avago/Broadcom) controllers are good choice. Pick one that has the proper PCIe interface for your mainboard (e.g. PCIe 3.0) and enough ports, that would probably be the -12i or -16i models in your case, otherwise you will need a SAS expander to connect more drives. The number stands for the number of lanes and the "i" for internal connection. In your case, I would recommend, that you use the controller just as dumb HBA without its hardware RAID capabilites and use the Linux software RAID provided by unRAID. This way, you are not dependent on LSI controllers, if something fails. You can just plug your hard drives in any other Linux machine and reassemble the RAID. And you can use all the flexibility that Linux RAID offers (changing RAID levels, resizing etc.). The performance benefit of hardware RAID, especially on a dedicated device, is most often not worth the hassle.
I totally understand the point of a dedicated RAID card if you're going the hardware-RAID route, but if you're just doing software-level RAID, what's the point of using the RAID card aside from the extra ports to connect the drives? (Asking strictly out of curiosity.)
There are no good (reliable, high-performant) SATA cards out there. The SATA HBAs that are out there are based on the Marvell 88SE9128 or ASMedia ASM1061, which are not good. The SATA controllers inside the Intel or AMD chipsets are much better, but they are not standalone. Mainboards offer enough SATA ports for most customers, that's why there is not enough market demand for a high-performing SATA HBA. And why would you design such a controller, if you could build a SAS controller instead, where you have much larger market? So if you want something decent, you have to buy a SAS controller and they almost always offer at least some RAID levels, but you don't have to use it.
A very important point you missed Jay, is when the cables and peripherals are organized; it is much easier to give your machine a cleanup, which should be performed at least once a year. Thank you for teaching the rubes , how its done.
put a Noctua NF-D15 on that CPU, they never fail I have had 2 of them for the last 5 years and they cool verry well. you can even add the new cromax stuff if you want it to look good.
Easily the part I need to work on most, I have a single M.2 drive and my cables management looks crappy, even though the case has plenty of solid cable management options. Thanks for this video Jay!!!
Amazing video and top notch cable management, Great work Jay! I always use the 90 degree bent Sata data cables. There's plenty of room here for the ones you used but those 90 degree ones are made for that reason.
For the drives, it would have been better to plug one cable into every other, and the next into the remaining ones. wouldn't have to bend the sata cables
@@gyorgysanta145 Happens on a lot of his videos. I assume it's just a precomposition inside of After Effects that the editor reuses, once it shows up, there's a slightly visible transparency issue. Always bothered me, but I never see people comment on it =D
All that zip ties hurt my eyes...going back to my own personal experience of nightmares. Since then velcro has saved my day. I feel like in heaven...or somewhere in between. In the end, awesome result Jay. What a pro.
Nicely done video on a rarely-discussed topic...only thing I do extra in a build with lots of drives is labeling both ends of the SATA cables...makes tracking a cable and/or finding a bad drive that you're trying to replace way easier.
Server with no ECC RAM? Surely it's worth it and recommended even if using unRAID. I get its sponsored, but a hot swappable Norco / Supermicro 16 bay with ECC RAM would have been better imo. This is still cool, don't get me wrong, but i wouldn't class it as server grade. Cabling is boss though.
Agreed, I thought it was interesting that he decided not to use ECC memory. I'm also curious to hear his reasoning for it, which I'm sure there has to be one.
Yeah, i get that you have backups of your data etc, but i wouldn't want to keep my home pictures / videos on a "server" without it. In his case, i assume it's all his TH-cam videos, so just as important
Just put all of my parts into a new case. Was able to do /some/ cable management. The hardest part was the dangling case fan wires that plug into the smart controller, and the power supply cables. My cables are not flat, they're all round.
21:51 " everything is easy to trace is what cable management is all about" i think this is most important aspect here. unlike clumping it all together, sleeving them and forget. if it was me at the beginning, i would have a central trunk of wiring and everything branching out, and that is not cable management. thanks for the idea.
Hahaha yeah I've done that a few times in my original setups. Lots of hours and completely worth it. Although I think that's for another video. Besides it does add to the cost as this would apply to the regular user. 😊
Wire and pins arent expensive in and of itself. Sleeving and tools that come with it are the $$$ factor. Though, I agree it is worth it, but I digress.
In my R5 it's full of hdds, I bought 5-in-1 SATA Extension Cable from ModDIY and had the cable length custom, so there are no slack between the drives. It looks really nice and makes it easy to put the back panel on, I highly suggest to get some cables like that for a lot of hdds in a system.
I pretty much do the same thing Jay. I have built about 7 or so PCs for myself, family and a friend of mine. I just finished my streaming PC with AMD Ryzen 5 1600, 32Gb 2400 MHz RAM, and a GTX 980 I got off a guy at work for $220 bucks before the massive GPU price hike. I wish I was a little better at cable managing but my builds still look nice inside main compartment. Just wish I could water cool my 2 GTX 1080s in my gaming PC to have them run a little more quiet while I game.
after watching alot of ur videos over the years i noticed that digress is one of ur favorite words to say all the time which i think there should be a tshirt that says i digress
I just built my first pc in that exact case. I think I did okay in terms of cable management. Keeping wires bundled, using my pass through grommets, etc. I have a bit of a rat's nest by my drives at the bottom though. You wouldn't notice though if you saw it from the other side. I'm really quite proud of myself.
For cutting the dangly bits off of zip ties, I prefer to use end nippers rather than straight or diagonal. It is almost impossible to accidentally your cables with them. I also use velcro ties for temporary cable management, and sometimes for long-term use as well, rather than using plastic zip ties only to cut them again a few minutes later. Or at least I try. Also, why not right angle SATA cables on the spinning rust drives? It would decrease the risk of them breaking off the connectors on the drives.
I like to lay the case flat when I connect the cables to the motherboard - it's a lot more comfortable IMO. Other then that - thank you for this video, I think it is important and useful. Keep up the good work
finally a tutorial that doesnt just do the best case scenario with custom length cablemod cables
Ehm linus tech tips...
fuck linus sponser tips
Yeah but the actual video starts at 6:16 so much bullshit at first
20:47 "That's better cable-managed than some systems I've seen that have 1 hard drive."
I feel personally attacked.
Honestly same😂
That is nothing - I feel personally demolished...
Did you report the video as "targeted harassment" and have the channel banned?
Sedirex Suck it up.... He spoke the truth. Why don’t people take pride in building a system anymore? My cable management is on par with Jay. It makes it easier to diagnose if a problem occurs vs a rats nest that can take a long time to dissect. Do it right from the start. Spend time with the cables and give them a girls name. 🤣
@@venividivici4253 r/woosh
I messed up a couple of the color correction points on this video :( oops. Totally on me, not Phil.
Unless it turned black and white. I'd say you missed no color ^_^.
wags wags hi jay
it is ok
Hey Jay! I discovered your channel a couple of weeks ago and I have been watching tons of your vids. I fucking love you man. Never change.
@jayz ever thought about networking all of your computers together, and charging a low price for using incredibuild or distcc on your systems?
I've been building PC's since the mid 90's, and never cared about the look at all.
After watching Jays vids for about 2 years, now i have a color-themed (black/red) PC with full sidepanel window, AiO liquid cooling, LED fans and properly managed sleeved cables.
Thx Jay, you are awesome :)
Was about to post the same thing. Been building PCs for over 20 years, never cared about the cable management. Planning on a new build (with this same case no less!), and this video was very helpful to me. After this will be untangling the spiderweb of wires behind my desk. eeep!
We never cared because how the hell did you manage IDE cables in those old cases? The best we could do was those "round" ones. Never mind routing behind the motherboard!
lol consumer victim
@@BananasananaB have you bollocks
@@chloedevereaux1801 20 years ain't long that would be since about 2000 which is perfectly believeable
Cable management begins at 6:08
Thank you. You are a good man
thank you
Thanks!
you the real mvp
bless
Watched this video last night with confidence that I can finally manage my cables properly. Today I tore down my system and redid everything. The cable management is worse than before lol back to the drawing board. Hats off to those with cable management patience 👏
Does it look better now?
Cheap trick for mock-up: use the twist ties that usually come with builds as temporary cable ties. Easy to remove and re-use, then once everything is in place, remove and replace each twist tie with a Zip Tie.
glad I'm not the only one who thought of this props.
You can also grab a load of them from grocery stores (;
I wouldn't reccomend that as a lot of people will have it all done and just get lazy and not replace them. Which then leaves metal wires in the case. Not great...
Surprised your comment isn't anchored to the top. It's a must-do if a builder doesn't want snipped plastic pieces all over the place. Used to do that with old school stereo systems, and continued the technique with computer builds.
evga also has cable management grommets
for SATA power cables in your case, I'd do first cable for 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th and the second cable for 2nd, 4th, 6th and 8th HDD so you dont need to make a loop
Finally ! You go up.
I don't think that'll work. That would force him to bend the cables around the in-between HDDs (around HDD 2 in case of 1 and 3 being connected and so on), and I don't think those flat cables are gonna bend that easily.
Nawar El Sabaa I see what u mean, but they do work, they will bend easily (easier than shown on video even) and I think its better protected cables. bending the way Jay did is fine anyway.
@@nawarelsabaa Well, it's pretty easy to split the plastic of the flat cable to make them easier to make more like a square of cable on this short distance and wont really affect the look.
I think he split the power connections and make "the loops" couse the side's for raid....? Correct me if I am wrong, but that is the only logic I saw. P.S. It really grinded my gears when I saw that "ponytail" sata's :D
Cable management in a nutshell: Planning, some trial and error, finishing. Rarely does it get finished off on the first attempt. Unless you've used the same case multiple times, it's just the way it is. So worth it, though, in the end. Nice tutorial, Jay.
matt depends on the case, some cases are very easy amd others alot harder
I've had the same case for over 15 years (three builds), so yeah, cable management comes pretty naturally on my own system.
Great job! 8 HDDs And 3 fan water cooler in the front, on a mid tower, +2 ssd !
21:13 complete and yet so clean main compartment, wow
I...I just realized that I don't use my front panel HD audio jacks but I took great care in routing the cable properly, plugging it in, and managing the excess length when I could have just... *TUCKED IT INTO THE BACK WITHOUT PLUGGING IT IN.* Well, live and learn.
19thHour lol same thing here
Those connectors are occasionally useful for guests. Even if you are not going to use them now, I follow the logic of "Make it available" so later on if you need another audio connector you're not looking like a buffoon because you neglected to have it available to you.
May I join the club ?
Yeah i dont use it too. I have USB headphones but still this cable management is good my pc lokk like a mess
I was reusing my old case and I found one cable sticking out that had some wires out of their plug. I concluded that it hasn't worked before anyways so I probably don't need to plug it in as I never used it. I then unplugged it from old motherboard and read - HD audio :D
I didnt like how the actual video based on the title didnt start until after 6min in... BUT... after the cable management started, it was a perfect/amazing diy video and I thank you! I have 2 or 3 pc building youtubers I watch and this was by far the best of this topic!
@JayzTwoCents, Just a suggestion from experience: If you connect the MB SATA to the top 4 drives and the RAID controller to the bottom 4, the lengths will work out better. Reason, the MB SATA connectors are at the front of the MB and thus closer to the bays so the cables can reach the top drives. The RAID controller will be a short card commonly and you will need the length from the lower drives to reach the SATA RAID connectors.
Connecting the MB SATA cables to the bottom drives wastes the added length you will need later.
I'm quite late into watching this video (out of interest to see what people have to say about cable management)... here's my $0.02. You have a fantastic vertical arrangement of 8 hard drives... and you have two strips of 4x SATA power cables... One improvement on cable management is to skip a hard drive between SATA connections on the same cable, or one cable deals with hard drives in odd numbered slots, the other cable deals with hard drives in even numbered slots. In other words, for your build, the first 4x SATA power cable is connected to hard drives 1, 3, 5 and 7; the second 4x SATA power cable is connected to hard drives 2, 4, 6 and 8. That way you don't have to fold the power cables to tamp them down. With flat cables, they'll look like a braid... aesthetically it may or may not be everybody's cup of tea, unless you have a solid back cover, which means who really cares?
I'd be curious to see how you set up the system to work as a server, render machine, etc. Please make a vid on that. Thankssssss.
petabyte project is not an unraid but I think jayz server will be. It is easy to setup and use. But I hope he is not buying a raid controller, he needs a HBA or dumb sata controller for unraid.
Ditto
Hey man, just wanted to say I'm only a recent subscriber - know this probably won't be seen, but just wanted to say I love the channel and the way you explain things in your videos in a really chill way. I've been saving for some 12 months after moving overseas, so i've been watching to try and get my head around some things because it's been YEARS since I've built a PC. Always looking forward to new content, so I check it out every day. Hope the studio changes keep rolling well!
Jay, you should talk with a case manufacturer and try to get them to do a collab and create what you think would be the ultimate cable-management case. Maybe something like hollow rails or spaced case covers to run the cables *inside* the case itself or whatever, I think you'd come up with something really cool.
Samurai Salesman he should host a design contest
Yep I've gone through many a case asking myself why don't the manufacturers of cases think about this in their design.
Having said that, this box is one of the better ones I've seen.
Thanks for the suggestion. 👍
NZXT H700i Check out the cable management in that Case and come back!
Samurai Salesman basically describing FD r6
That fancy $950 Singularity Spectre case is what you're looking for.
Thank you good sir, all I ever get is my cable management is horrid but no "this is how you do it" THIS explains more in about 10 minutes than years of everyone giving me poor reviews on management instead of SHOWING me how to do it properly
This type of video is what I love about JayzTwoCents channel.
Very helpful. I have to install 6 drives in my upgrade build and now I have a good idea of how to manage them. The best trick I gathered in this video is the zip tie the cable in bundels. Thanks for that jay.
This was an relaxing and in some sort hypnotic video. "stick it in, make a loop, stick it in, make a loop..." I loved it!
I have so much respect for you, Jay. You are so humble and like-able.
Jay, one thing I’ve done with my builds having multiple HDDs is to alternate every other HDD with the SATA power. It will eliminate the loops and still create a nice smooth appearance. Something about the loops has always bugged me...
Honestly, didn't think I would learn much from this video (even though I'm no professional by any means), but this was an extremely helpful video. Thank you so much for taking the time to make this and show us how it should always be done.
I used a Ryzen for a similiar build (just with an R5) and believe it is a better choice. (x1800, 32GB ECC memory, 10x 8TB drives, 2x250GB SSD for boot, 2x 512GB Nvme drives for cache).
ossme how's the temp of everything may I ask. I worry the case may have some airflow issue.
It is working great! I have a total of 7 fans in there. The only major heat source is the GTX 1070
ossme what are your temps under load ?
I’m actually building a custom pc from ground up at the moment, went with r5 2600 and evga gtx 1070, have yet to put it all together though. I’m curious to hear how your setup is running temp wise
ossme
That’s a lot of hentai
I literally just finished my new build less than an hour ago. I came over to my phone and saw this now. My cable management was a mess. I really needed this about 12 hours ago.
*Can someone teach me how to life manage like a pro?*
Zip tie, WD 40 & duct tape, Good luck
Subscribed.
Don't blow it.
Keep it simple.
Count your money.
Win the lottery.
and when they do, you can teach me, and i can teach and so on
Just started work the other day on a gaming build that uses this case, and I found that placing the rig on a towel makes it easier to spin around if I need to switch sides quickly and safely.
Damn it Jay.... Now I want to open up my case and redo my cables :P
same
Ditto
I want to replace my old Antec 900 case with a one with room to cable manage!
Agreed
Got a new PSU coming tomorrow. Need to get my shit together this time. Put in a drive on friday and damn i had to force that back panel on its a mess.
Your vids are really easy to watch bro. It makes it kinda fun to watch instead of jackass jokes while I am trying to learn how to build better
+JayzTwoCents
And try to separate the power cables as much you can from data cables.
Power cables can have interference on data cables.
Another good logic is, try to bend the cables as *less* you can.
This is even more important on data cables then power cables.
I have exact same R6 Case and the cable placement is fantastic. So easy to create a clean system build.
you make me wanna jus re do my cmputer lol
yeah me too xd
same lmao
but then You would have to You know, not use it for a sec :P
MindBlowerWTF That is the problem
Me too but I know that I cant do better because the power cables are all way too short, damnit xD
I'm building a brand new home media server right now in exactly the same case, using the exact same Seagate 10TB drives, minus the GPU ! Keep up the good work Jay.
Thanks Jay, this was very informative. I'm redoing my rat nests on both my builds. Needed this video! A+ Good job
Very clean work Jay, congrats. As a marine electronics engineer I have done quite a few installations of navigation equipment onboard ships, dealing with a mountain of cables each time thus I can tell how neat your cable management is.
No right-angled SATA cables? I find those are an excellent way to handle/improve cable management for drives in that configuration.
At 8:50 ish where the fan header on the define 7 is at the top cables should route correctly to the right and down. I hope so I just bought one. Video was helpful thanx Jay.
I configure servers/network equipment for a living and I would never recommend using an Intel raid controller for anything you care about. Get a newer Adaptec or LSI card and you'll be much better off. We've had too many speed/reliability issues with RST Raid for me to recommend them. If I could pull them all out of production, I would.
Edit: Also cringing a bit at the drive setup but you dont do it every day so i wont hate, just dying a little inside without a hotswap backplane
I think its because it needs direct passthrough to run unRAID. You don't want to use a proper hardware raid controller (well the features at least) . You want a controller using IT mode.
He's using it as a "workstation" though. How would he pass the physical disks through? HyperV at least doesnt really let you do that, I think Virtualbox might but there's no way in hell i'd run a server in Virtualbox (had a half broke WDS once because of that)
EDIT: Also you can get a controller that runs JBOD mode for something like that, there are plenty of those. They're called HBAs.
No, i *think" he's planning on using unRAID for the OS, and creating a passthrough VM using the GPU similar to what Linus did. Ideally you would use a HBA set to IT mode, or a flashed raid controller like the LSI 9211 (which is what i use). I don't think JBOD is the same. The unRAID OS needs bare metal access to the disks without the raid controller doing its thing. This enables proper SMART reporting etc. Google unRAID, you might find it interesting if you've never heard of it
That looks really clean, nice job! I saw many computer shops make awful messes with so little cables to have to work with.
I wish I would have seen this earlier I just built my first pc and from the front where the window is all the cables are hidden but... the back side isn’t so beautiful my cables are a tangled mess and I played hell getting the lid on
One of the best purchases I ever made was a roll of quality double-sided velcro strip, the same kind that comes with the Fractal case.
Cut them a little bit longer than you think you'll need, do your cable management without needing to commit to any specific layout, then trim off the excess so they take up minimum space.
Zip ties are probably the tightest fit tight and do the job damn well, but single time use and might have you cutting cables if you're rushing it or being plain careless.
A trick I've used for many drives in a stack is to power then up as drive 1,3,5,7 and 2,4,6,8 that way the power cable isnt bent over each drive and helps space things out. Also, I don't see any 90 degree sata cables being used. getting some 90 left and 90 right cabled would help flatten down all the data looms coming off those drives. And a question about the case, do the drives come out from the front side of the case or do you have to remove the entire sata power/data looms to get a drive out?
Am I the only one who thinks it's so satisfying seeing a bunch of hard drives stacked on eachother?
"7:36 They're called tweezers!" - The Verge
My Gunmetal R6 has been delayed until March 16 and here is Jay managing cables in one. A thousand broken SATA connector upon you sir!
I've dealt with probably around 20 sata drives in my life and I've always pulled on cables and stuff and have never broke one of those plastic tabs
I've actually had problems with the connectors on the cables breaking before the connectors on the drive breaking... not to say I'm not careful when installing or servicing them. Jay's recommendations on this point are still valid.
I was about to write the same thing, cable managed many hard drives quite violently and not a single connector failed, didnt even think about that being an issue.
Never broke one too...and I am constantly changing drives or plug in new ones to take stuff to friends or so. In the worst case scenario, I end up needing to replace the sata cables due to the excess bending.
They're built to take a beating but like all plastic things they have their limits because some dumbass tries to hulk it.
Jay is probably coming from a place of past experience. Shit happens.
Awesome video Jay. Just built a PC tonight for a friend and while my cable management had gotten better with each build this still helped give me some good ideas. Now I want to redo my main rigs cables.
14:57 good tip to know to bend the zip tie at the end to get it through the tiny loop.
Nord is a good sponsor that's relevant to your content, example of good advertisement. Thanks Jay.
This can't be right, I didn't see this in the Verge video, everyone knows that was the bible for building a PC.
IKR?! Where's his livestrong bracelet and how dare he call them "zip-ties" clearly they're tweezers
@@vanixiii5657 Where is the swiss army knife that hopefully has a screwdriver??! This is blasphemy!
My gosh! Where’s the brick? Calling it a power supply is *terribly wrong!*
I recommend going with MLC NAND SSDs for the cache, do not trust TLC that has only a tiny fraction of the write endurance of MLC.
For caching, spend an extra 20-40% but get an SSD that can handle 5-8PB of writes over its life as compared to 200-300TB of writes from a TLC drive. Furthermore, you will get more consistent performance with MLC.
And then you notice the PSU isn't working. 😌
That exact thing happened to me today. Took forever to troubleshoot too, because the PSU was pumping enough power to turn the RAM LEDs on, but nothing more.
Test run before puting it into a case? Anybody? No? Okay..
Fabijan Rehorić // Bingo!
Always test-run before building. Since I usually work with SFF cases, test-runs have become an absolute must. My first SFF build I didn't test-run, had to tear it down to reseat the CPU and only then it worked.
Ujiltrom M how do you test run it when you dont have everything plugged into place??
No excuses. I haven't built a PC in 8 years, so a lot of lessons were forgotten.
I tend to use small velcro ties when organising where my cables are going to go. Then once I have everything where I want it I zip tie them then remove the velcro ones, that way the cables stay in the same place.
I find this is easier than constantly cutting and retying zip ties as you change positions.
Is there a second part to this video?
What Raid did you use?
Definitely some clean work! I too get obsessive with my cable management after building a few thousand systems haha. Heck, it takes me longer to cable manage than it does to assemble!
One thing I've done in the past with tons of hard drives, to keep the sata power cables at equal lengths, is to alternate power from one cable to the next. Therefor keeping the base length nearly identical and shortening the extra loop length between drives. Makes for a cool effect too! Occasionally I have also removed the sata power plugs and re connected them at exact lengths to each drive. SUUUUPER clean! Man I miss building systems!
20:47 "That's better cable-managed than some systems I've seen that have 1 hard drive."
*sigh* i have an m.2 and this thing is more cable managed than mine
ya so do i just shove my cables in my pc because im lazy LMAO
I have an m.2 too, and i do not see the drives as problem, but the thing is that case fans and their cables take the mess to another level... spent 3 hours yesterday to try and better manage the cables, and that was a moderate success. Though if i had hard drives, i'd be more screwed than i already am.
@JayzTwoCents From my experience - when I do builds with multiple HDDs it often works better (and nicer) to use one SATA power cable for every other drive (1-3-5-7) and the other for the rest (2-4-6-8). Creates less loops/slacks and put less strain on the cable itself. The length between SATA power connectors on the cable was never a problem.
Guys it shows the IP @ 1:32 LIKE SO JAY CAN SEE!!!
Grand noticed that
Well that’s awkward 😅 1. Because he unintentionally revealed his IP and 2. Because he wasn’t using the VPN service he was promoting
it doesnt matter, its not a public IP address, you wont be able to access his computer without going through his ISP
Just about to build my first "modern" case build. Been about 7 years since I put together a tower and this has helped heaps, thanks!!
Why not alternate the sata power cables? Then you'd not have the loops to deal with...
Then the loops just get in the way of the next set of alternating connectors. The way he did it is just fine plsu if anything goes wrong with a drive's connection, he can easily see which drive and replace it easier etc. Just my 2 cents.
@@toriawelsh7274 wouldn't it be possible to put every second HDD upside down? so you got first connection on the left side, second on right side etc.
@@brohvakiindova4452 wouldn't change the fact that the cable would still be in the way. There is no way around it. You either make the loops. Or have a cable underneath another cable. Sure it'll work. But what's the point.
This is hands down the best cable management tutorial video out there. Wonderful explaining and beautiful result :thumbsup:
Why are you not using a SAS controller and SAS cables? You can connect 4 SATA drives with just one cable. Besides, there are no good SATA controller cards out there, that I would want to trust my data with. Go with something like an Avago 9361-16i. Additional benefit: You don't need to split the hard drives between onboard controller and external controller.
Sebastian Schrader I am new to enterprise hardware and I am planning an unraid server inside a 12 hot-swap rosewill server case. My question is which sas card works best with unraid?
I have no experience with unRAID, but because it's just Linux, I assume anything that works well with Linux, will work well with unRAID, if they provide a decent Kernel with all necessary drivers/modules, which I assume they do, if they provide storage software. In my experience LSI (now Avago/Broadcom) controllers are good choice. Pick one that has the proper PCIe interface for your mainboard (e.g. PCIe 3.0) and enough ports, that would probably be the -12i or -16i models in your case, otherwise you will need a SAS expander to connect more drives. The number stands for the number of lanes and the "i" for internal connection. In your case, I would recommend, that you use the controller just as dumb HBA without its hardware RAID capabilites and use the Linux software RAID provided by unRAID. This way, you are not dependent on LSI controllers, if something fails. You can just plug your hard drives in any other Linux machine and reassemble the RAID. And you can use all the flexibility that Linux RAID offers (changing RAID levels, resizing etc.). The performance benefit of hardware RAID, especially on a dedicated device, is most often not worth the hassle.
Sebastian Schrader thanks for the information. I will look at that brand of cards.
I totally understand the point of a dedicated RAID card if you're going the hardware-RAID route, but if you're just doing software-level RAID, what's the point of using the RAID card aside from the extra ports to connect the drives? (Asking strictly out of curiosity.)
There are no good (reliable, high-performant) SATA cards out there. The SATA HBAs that are out there are based on the Marvell 88SE9128 or ASMedia ASM1061, which are not good. The SATA controllers inside the Intel or AMD chipsets are much better, but they are not standalone. Mainboards offer enough SATA ports for most customers, that's why there is not enough market demand for a high-performing SATA HBA. And why would you design such a controller, if you could build a SAS controller instead, where you have much larger market? So if you want something decent, you have to buy a SAS controller and they almost always offer at least some RAID levels, but you don't have to use it.
A very important point you missed Jay, is when the cables and peripherals are organized; it is much easier to give your machine a cleanup, which should be performed at least once a year. Thank you for teaching the rubes , how its done.
put a Noctua NF-D15 on that CPU, they never fail I have had 2 of them for the last 5 years and they cool verry well. you can even add the new cromax stuff if you want it to look good.
Easily the part I need to work on most, I have a single M.2 drive and my cables management looks crappy, even though the case has plenty of solid cable management options. Thanks for this video Jay!!!
Don’t know when I’ll actually be able get my hands on a video card to do some cable management of my own so I’ll just watch you do it instead.
Amazing video and top notch cable management, Great work Jay!
I always use the 90 degree bent Sata data cables. There's plenty of room here for the ones you used but those 90 degree ones are made for that reason.
That PC must weight a ton.
Neuro the r6 alone is 15 KG
Neuro only if you lift it ! :D
I built an almost identical build a few months ago as my home VMware server. Yes, it's freaking heavy as hell.
Oh what a tangled tale Jay weaves in this video... Great job!
For the drives, it would have been better to plug one cable into every other, and the next into the remaining ones. wouldn't have to bend the sata cables
I wish my case had some velcro loops like that, it'd be so much easier to keep things neat
That saturation/hue switch @ 5:35. What happened there?
It turned into fancy build-montage with music mode. :D
@@gyorgysanta145 Happens on a lot of his videos. I assume it's just a precomposition inside of After Effects that the editor reuses, once it shows up, there's a slightly visible transparency issue. Always bothered me, but I never see people comment on it =D
All that zip ties hurt my eyes...going back to my own personal experience of nightmares. Since then velcro has saved my day. I feel like in heaven...or somewhere in between. In the end, awesome result Jay. What a pro.
What about the other 7 drives?
Nicely done video on a rarely-discussed topic...only thing I do extra in a build with lots of drives is labeling both ends of the SATA cables...makes tracking a cable and/or finding a bad drive that you're trying to replace way easier.
Server with no ECC RAM? Surely it's worth it and recommended even if using unRAID. I get its sponsored, but a hot swappable Norco / Supermicro 16 bay with ECC RAM would have been better imo. This is still cool, don't get me wrong, but i wouldn't class it as server grade. Cabling is boss though.
Agreed, I thought it was interesting that he decided not to use ECC memory. I'm also curious to hear his reasoning for it, which I'm sure there has to be one.
Yeah, i get that you have backups of your data etc, but i wouldn't want to keep my home pictures / videos on a "server" without it. In his case, i assume it's all his TH-cam videos, so just as important
Oooo, 6 mins in and I can already feel the new editing style. Totally badass!
So clean 😍
Just put all of my parts into a new case. Was able to do /some/ cable management. The hardest part was the dangling case fan wires that plug into the smart controller, and the power supply cables. My cables are not flat, they're all round.
So I still have to buy multiple Define r6's if I want extra drive trays, got it...
No fractal has them on their website for to buy two at a time for the R6
Jay & Linus TT?!?! Together? OMG I AM OFF MY ROCKER! This is awesome!!! I needed this in my life!!
VPN Wars: Nord vs TunnelBear
Cam F Hotspot Shield
I use Avast VPN
21:51 " everything is easy to trace is what cable management is all about" i think this is most important aspect here. unlike clumping it all together, sleeving them and forget. if it was me at the beginning, i would have a central trunk of wiring and everything branching out, and that is not cable management. thanks for the idea.
CoolerMaster should quit at life for that ATX connector. It's atrocious.
Because POWER, so it's got to be big, right? it's a gimmick.
That was very nice cable management technique. I learned something here... Time well spent. These videos matter.
I wanna see Jay try to cable manage a case that doesn;t do 70% of the work for him
Joshua Lee I’ve done it on pre built systems with ease that don’t have cable tie down points.
Fractal R6 hands down is the best Case on the market. So much modular expandability and cable management is a breeze.
If thats pro, then I dont know what to call people who make custom length cables and use special combs and cable clips for their build.
Gods
Hahaha yeah I've done that a few times in my original setups. Lots of hours and completely worth it.
Although I think that's for another video. Besides it does add to the cost as this would apply to the regular user. 😊
Wire and pins arent expensive in and of itself. Sleeving and tools that come with it are the $$$ factor. Though, I agree it is worth it, but I digress.
Those are cable artists
cablemod.com
In my R5 it's full of hdds, I bought 5-in-1 SATA Extension Cable from ModDIY and had the cable length custom, so there are no slack between the drives. It looks really nice and makes it easy to put the back panel on, I highly suggest to get some cables like that for a lot of hdds in a system.
If you do an update video pleasee tell us the weight of it?
I pretty much do the same thing Jay. I have built about 7 or so PCs for myself, family and a friend of mine. I just finished my streaming PC with AMD Ryzen 5 1600, 32Gb 2400 MHz RAM, and a GTX 980 I got off a guy at work for $220 bucks before the massive GPU price hike. I wish I was a little better at cable managing but my builds still look nice inside main compartment. Just wish I could water cool my 2 GTX 1080s in my gaming PC to have them run a little more quiet while I game.
Would YA just LOOK at it?!
after watching alot of ur videos over the years i noticed that digress is one of ur favorite words to say all the time which i think there should be a tshirt that says i digress
But, how many pictures can I store
On this thing
About one fuckillion.
I just built my first pc in that exact case. I think I did okay in terms of cable management. Keeping wires bundled, using my pass through grommets, etc. I have a bit of a rat's nest by my drives at the bottom though. You wouldn't notice though if you saw it from the other side. I'm really quite proud of myself.
Sponsored by LinusTechTips!!!!
For cutting the dangly bits off of zip ties, I prefer to use end nippers rather than straight or diagonal. It is almost impossible to accidentally your cables with them. I also use velcro ties for temporary cable management, and sometimes for long-term use as well, rather than using plastic zip ties only to cut them again a few minutes later. Or at least I try.
Also, why not right angle SATA cables on the spinning rust drives? It would decrease the risk of them breaking off the connectors on the drives.
I just purchased a modular PSU. Simple.
I like to lay the case flat when I connect the cables to the motherboard - it's a lot more comfortable IMO.
Other then that - thank you for this video, I think it is important and useful. Keep up the good work