Introduction

IDE cables are arguably the most important cable inside of your computer. They keep your Hard Drive's data flowing, and generally make sure everything can talk. IDE cables have been around for generations of the computing world, and they're still as common today as they were 10 years ago. Normal users don't exactly think much about what they're plugging their drives in with when they're hooking everything up. An IDE cable is an IDE cable, right? Wrong. You've got all kinds of IDE cables to pick from. You've got your old school ATA-33 cables, and then they came out with the newfangled ATA-66 and shortly after that there were the ATA-100 cables that seemed to be the same as the ATA-66. If you wait a few weeks (maybe a couple months tops) I'm sure you're going to see some people touting new ATA-133 specific cables, too. As if picking the right cable type wasn't bad enough, then they get you on length, do you need 18"? 24"? Or maybe you need one of the massive 36" beasts for your four foot tall server tower you really have no chance of filling. Oh, did I forget to mention Floppy cables, too? Can't forget those, either...

Anyways, cable selections aside, all of the cables have some things in common, with the first one being their obnoxious dimensions. Sure, IDE and floppy cables are really thin, but what does that matter when they're a good 3" wide? If you're like me and can have a grand total of 4 or more IDE cables, you've got a veritable wall of grey wires sitting at the front of your case. Once you get to that point, there is almost no hope for your case, no matter how much cable routing you do, so you're just toast at that point. (You can ask my friend Derrick who has a total of 7 ribbon cables in his tower. He can't do anything to get them far enough out of the way.) So you're kinda stuck for a solution at that point. What's the best way to fix that jungle of cables? Well, wireless would be the first method, but since there's no form of wireless capable of that type of speed transmission, smaller cables are going to be the solution. So-Trick Computers sent a set of cables my way for me to check out and look at in my system first hand, and considering the number of IDE sized cables I've got (3 IDE (eventually 4), floppy and THEN the Audigy Platinum Drive) I've got a ton of cables hogging my case. How do these guys do for everything? Lets take a look and see what they do.

Construction

Well, Everyone knows what a normal IDE cable looks like, big wide flat and grey. (Can someone explain to me why Microsoft thinks that "grey" is a typo? Last I checked Grey and Gray were the same thing...Sorry, back on topic now.) Its got it's a couple variants on length though, there are the normal ones that have the motherboard connectors at one end, with one drive connector a little past the middle then a second one at the end of the cable. Here's a picture here:

Well, the Round IDE cables don't differ incredibly much in construction, except that they're less than an inch across. So, what that does for you is, it makes the inside of your computer look a LOT neater and it also makes air move more freely inside your case. Here's an example of that:

As far as the actual cable construction goes, there are some similarities and some differences as well. The IDE connectors are in roughly the same positions as they are on a flat cable, which is useful because you won't need to worry about whether or not a round will fit, if an 18" IDE cable works for your 2 drives, than an 18" round will as well.

Then after all of the connectors, and on each side of the middle one, is a triangular rubber boot that covers the cable where it angles in towards the main tube.

Then after that is the rubber tube that the cables runs thru, till it gets to the next IDE connector.

One last cool part inside of there is the actual wires; Normal IDE wires are plain straight cables up ribbon. However in an area as small as this round cable there could be a possibility of crosstalk between wires, so to prevent this, they twist the wire pairs. This allows for better signal integrity.

One last thing to note, these cables are available in half a dozen colors from So-Trick, so you can get a mess of them to match any color scheme you have working for your case. So, all in all these cables are built pretty well and seem to be pretty slick all in all.

Design: 3/3

Install

Ever installed an IDE cable before? Yes? Well, guess what, they're not any different now. Not exactly challenging.

Install: 3/3

Performance

Just about 6 months ago now, I did some reasonably extensive testing on whether or not Round cables lived up to their claims of no interference was introduced with them. From my tests, I saw no noticeable difference in how they worked when compared to your classic ATA 100 flat cable. So for this review I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about performance and the like for these cables. (If you'd like to read that article, you can read it here.)

So, today, I'm going to be commenting a bit more on how they look inside of a computer case more than performance. As some of you know, I am a case modder. I enjoy working on computer cases for reasons that escape normal human thought. So, the look of a computer is definitely important to me, and likely always will be. This is one reason I'm so taken with these round cables; they do a damned good job of cleaning up the inside of a case. Here's my case when I use flat ribbon cables:

Blah. Nothing there but freaking clutter. That's with 3 IDE cables, a floppy cable and an Audigy Drive cable. That's even with the Audigy cable tucked as far out of the way as possible. The other cables are too much of a jumble to do anything with. Now, here's what happened when I switched the ribbon cables with round cables. There are 3 round IDE a round floppy and the same Audigy ribbon:

Much better in there isn't it? I think it is. While I'm sure some of you out there won't agree with me, I'm used to that. Some of my other stuff has brought pretty hefty firestorms on me before, so I'm used to it. I'd say that the round cables do everything I need them to, including clean up my case. The only beef I have with them is that for mid towers they don't have SHORT IDE cables to go from the IDE to a hard drive. For me I could use a 5 or 6" cable for it and still have slack, so the 10" or so from the mobo to the first connector leaves a LOT of slack. Maybe eventually.

Performance: 3/4

Pros & Cons

Pros

• No performance loss
• They look cool
• They're not 3" wide
• They can match your case's color scheme

Cons

• They still haven't made me the 6" cables I want

Conclusion

I'd say all in all that these cables were a useful addition to a case. They're not an overly expensive addition to a case, and they run your drives 100% as well as your flat ones, and are all in all awesome performers. I'd definitely give them 2 thumbs up.

SLRating: 9/10

Re-Printed From SLCentral

Fatal error: Call to undefined function view() in /home/slcentra/public_html/temp/layout/footer/reviews/hardware/cooling/print1.php on line 5