Can’t stand looking at a
tangle of ugly cables every
time you sit at your desk?
Control your unwieldy wiring
problem without breaking
a sweat!
The back of your computer can look
bad enough if you’re a simple PC user;
if you’re a gadget geek, it turns into a
mythological nightmare. First, there are
the must-have cables: a power cable
for the computer itself, video
and power cables for the moni-
tor, a cable for your mouse and
keyboard, and a network cable.
Sound enthusiasts will add a few
more to the mix, as a typical 5.1
setup comes with cables for all
fi ve satellites, a power cable for
the subwoofer, and possibly an
additional cable for an external
volume control.
Get a little fancier and you can
throw in a USB headset for gam-
ing, two cables to power and con-nect an external drive, USB and power
cables for a printer, and a USB cable for
a webcam. That puts us at 19 separate
cables, all undoubtedly going to a single
tower and surge protector.
Before you start tidying, you need to
start untangling. And to untangle, you
must fi rst unplug. Going with the clean-
slate approach is the best way to start
managing your cable catastrophe. It’s
impossible to make order out of a cha-
otic mess of wires. You’ll save far more
time by disconnecting all your cables
and carefully laying them on the fl oor
next to your workspace. If you’re over-
ambitious, you can organize the cables
by type—speaker, USB, power—but no
matter how you do it, you’ll want to have
a game plan.C
ables suck.
But it’s not your fault. You spend an hour or so arranging
your desk, moving your monitor, setting up your speakers—the
last thing on your mind is cable management. When it comes time to
plug everything in, you just want to fire up your rig and commence frag-
ging, or movie watching, or minesweeping. You don’t want to get arm-
deep in the mucky muck you’ve created behind your computer. What
you can’t see won’t hurt you, right?
Wrong. Given time, sloppy cable management always rears its ugly
head. It never improves by itself, and, in fact, it gets worse with each
new device you wire into your rig. But you don’t have to get crazy to
get clutter free and connected. We’ve broken cable management into
four easy steps, and you probably already have all the tools you need!Organize Your Computer Cables
1 Untangle Your Cables
BY DAVID MURPHY72 MAXIMUMPC NOVEMBER 2007
how (^2) IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE, ONE STEP AT A TIME
TIME HOURS:MINUTES
00:27
2 Label Your Cables
You can certainly tell some cables from others by
sight alone, but what about all of those black USB
cords you have? Or your speaker wires?
Labeling your cables is just as important as
tying them together because you don’t want to
have to trace through a tangled web of cords to
fi nd out what’s what. You can buy fancy labels
from the store or do what we did—use colored
tape to label cables by type (USB, power, etc.),
then write their purposes on the tape itself.
WHAT YOU NEED
SCISSORS
CABLE TIES
CABLE CLAMPS
NARROW COLORED TAPE
(OR MASKING TAPE)
PEN
NAILS/SCREWS
HAMMER/DRILL
It goes without saying, be sure your computer is off before
you start yanking every cable in sight. And pull gently.
Don’t use a Sharpie to label cables—it
will surely make a mess. Thin-tipped
markers are your friends.