Hmm...
THe cable management is definitely doable here.
The main problem is stiff power cables. You can still slide in hdd properly in reverse direction. All you need to do is use the screws on first two HDD screw holes and not 1st and last one( there are 3 screw holes on each hdd on side. ).
With like of corsair HX series PSU, this is definitely doable as the PSU have flat modular cables unlike mesh covered round cables of TAGAN which hates to bend.
Also there is one more thing you can do. Its some work but its doable.
There is a top HDD rack in this cabinet right at the top. You can disassemble this and attach it where PSU is and move the PSU up ( yup possible to do this with help of just 4 screws which needs to be removed from under the cage.
Then you can route all cables from the back of the mobo tray and have 3 HDDs where PSU is and rest at the bottom front of the cabinet.
I plan to do this when I get time sometime in December.
yesterday I connected top 2 HDDS upside down and this gave me better airflow and cable management in the cabby than before. Problem is the SATA cables I have are all 18 inch ones. With bigger cables, you can take all of them to the backside and move them to the front / back in such a way that they are not visible like this.
Plan to buy lian li SATA cables when Phoenix gets em with this lot. As they are 33 inch, those will come real handy for cable management.
This is how it currently looks.
basically everything in this case can be removed with help of just a screw driver.
Dont like horizontal rod running across? It can be removed.
Dont want top HDD bay there? It can be removed.
Dont want front HDD cage? It can be removed and you can use smaller one at the top by moving it at bottom.
All screw holes match each other making it easy to configure as you wish if you have time.
Also colour contrast plays an important role in perception of mess
With black cables, this same thing will look much nicer in pics.
With red yeallow bright colours, everything looks ugly.
But this is functional. Temps are great.
Its just the matter of time and patience. I dont have any at the moment with busy schedule. And honestly I never managed to get cable management done properly. But this time I do
Will be done sometime in 2nd week of december.
I would still take this over current offerings available here.
I am not fond of CM cabbys as except ATCS, every cabby I have worked on turned out to be finger cutter in one way or other.
EDIT:
And these are the temps without aircon at the moment. Room temp is around 25C.
Nehalem running at 4.2Ghz. These are idle temps btw. Load CPU temps are as usualy around 75-78.
In the end, this is cabby without side panel
Who except me is gonna know whats inside, my hardware does not mind hehe.
