Death by cables. How do you organize your's?

bobland · 14 Jun 2015

I've got 3 power strips with wires running up, down and across the desk. I'm trying to find a way to organize the snake pit of wires.

My set up is 1 monitor, modem, speakers, headphone, keyboard, mouse, Logitech G13, 2 powered USB hubs, wireless adapter for 360 controller, cable for phone charger. Cables to printer, scanner, HDMI to TV thru wall, USB extender thru wall, cables from basement to and from modem.

One major problem is all the external power boxes that take up so much room on the power strips, thus requiring many strips. Probably have some peripheral buried under the mess.

Anybody find a reasonable way out of this mess?

sgage · 14 Jun 2015

bobland said:

I've got 3 power strips with wires running up, down and across the desk. I'm trying to find a way to organize the snake pit of wires.

My set up is 1 monitor, modem, speakers, headphone, keyboard, mouse, Logitech G13, 2 powered USB hubs, wireless adapter for 360 controller, cable for phone charger. Cables to printer, scanner, HDMI to TV thru wall, USB extender thru wall, cables from basement to and from modem.

One major problem is all the external power boxes that take up so much room on the power strips, thus requiring many strips. Probably have some peripheral buried under the mess.

Anybody find a reasonable way out of this mess?

No.

Periodically I take everything apart, take my desktop computer and give it a good compressed air cleaning, and put it all back together again as rationally as I can. But it always turns into a rat's nest.

There are some commercial products out there that purport to organize your cables, but I've never really looked into it.

GokAy · 14 Jun 2015

Mine looks like this, but seems you have more going on:

Behind the case is a mess

Death by cables. How do you organize your's?-20150614_231027197_ios.jpg

Cable channels etc underneath the desk

Death by cables. How do you organize your's?-20150614_231156387_ios.jpg

Using the carpet to hide a bit

Death by cables. How do you organize your's?-20150614_231311688_ios.jpg

Cable channels for the rest

Death by cables. How do you organize your's?-20150614_231329191_ios.jpg

Lady Fitzgerald · 14 Jun 2015

Actually, compared to my miserable, magnificent mess, your setup looks great, Gokhan!

I used to keep my cables all neatly bundled but I've gotten too old and decrepit to be crawling around back there to undo everything anytime I want to add, remove, reroute, or replace a cable. Now, I just let them lay loose so I can detach both ends of a cable, then pull it out from one end. Sometimes, I'll attach a string to the far end of a cable before pulling so I can retrieve it in case it gets hung up.

To clean out dust from behind my desk and the drawers my printer, scanners, and computer are on, I wait until I'm going to be out of the house for at least a couple of hours, then, just before leaving, I grab my DataVac Electric Duster (a really powerful blower used for cleaning computer gear; much better and cheaper than canned "air" in the long run), hold my breath, reach over the, printer, monitors, and computer and blow out as much dust as I can, and get out of the house fast so I can breathe again! After I get back, dust will have settled over the room but I can reach that and it doesn't take long to clean it up.

Anyway, this is the miserable, magnificent mess:

Death by cables. How do you organize your's?-img_0005.jpg

I have all my network hardware on a shelf inside the linen closet in my bathroom (more room there). I just revamped everything in there to get a bit more usable space for possible future hardware. The TV tuners are now Velcroed to the wall of the closet. Except for the coax cables, which I was able to custom make, the power cables that are attached to the PSUs and the Ethernet cables have been bundled to corral excessive length (I didn't want to void the warranties on the PSUs and it is difficult to custom make the Ethernet cables because I'm color blind). The cables other wise lay loose but are fairly neatly routed out of the way so I can more easily get at them.

Death by cables. How do you organize your's?-network-2.jpg

margrave · 15 Jun 2015

Furniture hides my cables.

I have an ordinary desk, with the computer on the left, and keyboard, mouse, dual speakers, dual monitors in the middle.

But there's much more: There's a table to the left with a second keyboard and mouse. And a digital piano next to that, with a single monitor.

POWER CABLES
computer
monitor 1, 2, 3
piano
A/V receiver
equalizer 1, 2
DVD player
audio mixer

DATA CABLES
USB keyboard 1, 2
USB mouse 1, 2
USB web cam
USB Presonus audio interface
MIDI cables x 2

VIDEO CABLES
VGA cable, computer to monitor 2
VGA cable, computer to switch box
VGA cable, switch box to monitor 1
VGA cable, switch box to monitor 3

AUDIO CABLES
computer to desktop speakers
piano to mixer
DVD player to mixer
Presonus interface to mixer
mixer to equalizer 1
mixer to equalizer 2
equalizer 1 A/V receiver
equalizer 2 A/V receiver
speaker cables x 4

All of the cables hang behind the desk, behind the piano, and behind the speakers. Invisible.

Gravity handles all of the "cable management".