eBay Guides - Taming the spaghetti beast

This guide was written first and foremost with the intent to educate PC enthusiasts on the finer points of taming the unruly and unsightly monster that we all hate to see inside of our computers, otherwise known as 'spaghetti'. For the uninitiated, spaghetti refers to the copious amounts of loose, disorganized and multi-colored wiring that exists in all computers today. This messy array of wiring has distinct disadvantages which if not corrected, could have detrimental effects on your computing experience.

As we all know, better airflow in a computer means cooler temperatures as air can flow freely throughout the case and not become impeded by wayward wiring that blocks the air from reaching the furthest corners of it. By sleeving and properly maintaining your wiring, you may enjoy higher and more stable overclocking frequencies, cooler case temperatures as well as keeping the inside of your rig tidy, orderly and professional looking. With that said, let us begin our journey by outlining the tools and materials you will need to experience spaghetti freedom once and for all.

Most of these items can easily be found around the house, but some of them, particularly the molex pin removers, are specialty items, and as such may be tougher to find. You can easily find all that you need to complete this project by clicking the links below for faster searching on eBay.

Fig. 1

Materials Needed:

Methodology:

Step 1: With your male molex pin remover, insert it over the first pin in the white male molex connector.

Step 2: With your other hand, support the molex connector, and with your forefinger and thumb, push the wire you wish to be removed forward, into the connector. This allows the contact pins inside the molex connector to move freely inside, thus giving the removal tool the clearance to slide over the tabs that hold the contact pin in place.

Step 3: Lightly push forward on the removal tools’ plunger while simultaneously gently pushing the wire you are removing back into the connector. Ensure that you use as little force as possible when pulling the contact pin out of the molex. As you can see in the picture below (Fig. 2), all four contact pins have been freed, and the male molex connector removed.

Fig. 2

Step 4: Now grab a male molex connector. At this point in time, you are going to want to become familiar with the orientation of the wires that connect to it and the molex connector itself.

Fig. 3

As you can see above, the molex connector has a sequence of numbers corresponding to the holes beneath them. These numbers are not for show; these are what help you avoid potentially damaging your computer and its components. There is one hole for each number, thus, four holes for four wires: one yellow, two black and one red.

CAUTION: Ensure that when inserting contact pins into a molex connector that you insert them in the same sequence as when you first removed them. YOU DO NOT WANT TO INSERT THE WRONG WIRE INTO THE WRONG HOLE! DAMAGE TO YOUR COMPUTER EQUIPMENT COULD RESULT!

The numbered sequence is as follows:

1 = Yellow
2 = Black
3 = Black
4 = Red

The following picture is an example of how your molex contact pins should be oriented. Please be aware that the picture is for demonstration purposes only. The contact pins and molex connector shown below are female, not male.

Fig. 4

By now, you may be asking, “Wait a second. There are two black wires! How do I know which one goes in number 2 and which one goes in number 3?” Good question; this is an important observation. The easiest method is to follow a black wire back to the other end of its molex connector and read which numbered hole it resides in. In other words, each end of a molex wire will always be contained within a molex connector; simply take a black wire and trace it back to its other molex connector. From there, you can read the number in which it rests in, which tells you which hole in the molex connector (number 2 or number 3) to place the other end of the black wire into.

In cases where the wires are covered with sleeving and you are not able to see where either black wire goes, simply use your fingers to make your wires sit alongside each other, flattened out inside the sleeving. Run your fingers along the wires until you are 100% sure that the wires are not crossed and that they are all running parallel to one another in the yellow, black, black, red sequence. Once they are, pull back the sleeving on both ends of the wire bundle to view the black wires. This allows you to make sure that your wires are not crossed over the other, as well as getting an idea which black wire is destined for hole number 2 or hole number 3 in the molex connector.

Step 5: Now that you have figured out which colored molex wire goes where in the molex connector, it is time to insert the male molex contact pins into the male molex connector. Remember to orient your wires in the manner below, and pay particular attention to which holes the black wires correspond to in the molex connector.

Installation of the molex contact pins is achieved by simply sliding each wire into the appropriately numbered hole until you hear an audible ‘snick’ of the tabs resetting themselves against the insides of the molex connector. Gently pull on each wire to ensure that each contact pin inside is secure in the molex connector and will not back out.

Step 6: The next step is to remove the two white female molex connectors. This is accomplished by using your female molex removal tool and following Steps 1, 2, and 3. After removing both white female molex connectors, you should now have something similar to this once finished, minus the taped ends which will be covered in the next step:

Fig. 5

Step 7: Now that we have removed all three white molex connectors and replaced only the male molex connector with a black one, we are ready to install some black mesh sleeving. The first thing to do is to prepare the molex wires. I do this by grabbing a bit of Scotch packaging tape and wrap the ends of the four molex wires together and twist the end of the tape into a point at the end (see Fig. 5 for details).

The tape assists with both the installation of the sleeving and later the heatshrink, as it allows them to smoothly slide over the molex contact pin tabs, which if otherwise unsheathed with tape would catch on the sleeving and heatshrink. This method of taping the ends of the molex contact pins together means that you will prevent runs from occurring in the sleeving and tears in the heatshrink from the sharp ends of the molex contact pin tabs that protrude outward.

Step 8: With that completed, it is time to grab our black mesh sleeving and install the sleeving over the taped ends of the four molex connector wires. In order to do this, we first need to measure how much sleeving we need. I like to cut my mesh sleeving a little longer than needed for a few reasons. The first is that it’s always easier to remove excess sleeving than replace it. The second is that when you cut plastic mesh sleeving and then melt the ends of it to prevent it from unraveling or coming apart during installation, you will invariably shorten the sleeving a bit. So, always remember to account for a bit of extra length!

Step 9: Once you have an idea as to how long your sleeving will need to be and you make length corrections with a pair of sharp scissors you will want to melt both ends of the mesh sleeving with the Aim-A-Flame so that the sleeving does not come apart during installation. CAUTION: Be advised, that fire is inherently dangerous, and that this task should be attempted by adults only. Also be advised that you do not want to burn the ends of the sleeving so that they catch fire, you only want to melt.

Step 10: Having cut the sleeving to the appropriate length and melted the ends, it is time to install it. Simply slide one end of the sleeving over the taped end of the molex contact pins and gently work the sleeving so that it slides over the entire length of the four molex wires.

Step 11: With this task completed, it is time to prepare the heatshrink. Ideally, when measuring out my heatshrink, I like to make the heatshrink a little longer than needed. As with the sleeving, I always beleive in measuring twice and cutting once! Use a pair of sharp scissors for this; a piece of heatshrink, about 1” in length will suffice.

Step 12: Once you have measured out and cut yourself a piece of heatshrink with a pair of scissors, it is time to install it on the sleeving. In order to do this, we must make the diameter of the heatshrink a bit bigger as it is too snug a fit to slide over the taped ends of the four molex contact pins. This is easily accomplished by using our multi-talented scissors in a “Jaws of Life” fashion, much like this:

Fig. 6

Simply poke the end of the scissors into one end of the heatshrink and gently force open the scissors. With enough gentle force, the heatshrink will start to expand. For best results, stretch the heatshrink with the scissors in 45 degree increments so that the heatshrink stretches evenly. This is important because you want the heatshrink to shrink uniformly when heated. If you have one part of the heatshrink stretched more than another, you will have an uneven heating surface and the heatshrink will shrink more in one area than another. You want the openings of the heatshrink to look like perfect circles, you do not want them to look like ovals. CAUTION: You can easily split your heatshrink if you do not evenly and uniformly stretch the heatshrink out using scissors. You can also split your heatshrink by applying too much force and stretching the heatshrink past its stretching point. Be careful!

Step 13: The next step is to slide the stretched heatshrink quickly over the taped molex contact pins and the sleeving before it shrinks back to its original diameter. Tape was not used during this part of the process by me, as my heatshrink was stretched enough to comfortably fit over the molex contact pins without the tabs on the pins tearing the heatshrink. Once the heatshrink has been slid over the taped end of the four molex contact pins, slide the heatshrink over the sleeving and then to the end of the wiring bundle so that it rests about 1/4” away from the molex connector.

Step 14: Following the stretching and installation of the first piece of heatshrink, go ahead and do the following for a second piece of heatshrink by going through Steps 11, 12 and 13. You should now have something that looks similar to this, minus the lack of tape on the end of the four molex contact pins:

Fig. 7

Step 15: Before we can heat the heatshrink, we must install a female molex connector onto the end of the currently taped molex contact pin connectors. Thus, the first order of business is to remove the tape that binds the four contact pins together. Be very careful when you do this, as you can break off the molex contact pin tabs or possibly pull the wires right out of the contact pins themselves.

Step 16: Once the tape has been removed from the ends of the four molex contact pin connectors, the next step is to grab a black female molex connector and install it on the now bare four molex contact pins. The procedure for this can be found by following Steps 4 and 5. Please keep in mind to follow all CAUTION warnings in these steps, and ensure that you pay particular attention to all instructions given as you can damage your computer components if you do not follow the directions carefully.

Step 17: Once the black female molex connector has been installed, move the second piece of heatshrink you installed into place, about 1/4” from the end of the molex connector.

Step 18: Now comes the fun part. Grab your hairdryer and use the lowest possible heat setting to gently warm, and then heat the heatshrink. This will allow for a more uniformly shrunk heatshrink, as well as avoiding the dreaded 'bubble effect'. This phenomenon occurs when you heat heatshrink too fast or when you stretch heatshrink in an oval shape and then apply heat. This causes some areas of the heatshrink to heat too fast, while other areas heat too slowly. Ultimately what happens is that the heatshrink becomes shrunk too 'tight' in some areas, and too 'loose' in others, resulting in a bubbly appearance of the heatshrink. Again, the aim here is uniformity… so heat the heatshrink starting from the bottom to top, left to right, making sure every spot on the heatshrink is heated evenly. With enough time, you should have something that looks like this:

Fig. 8

Step 19: Having completely finished one half of the Y-power adapter, it is time to start on the other half. So, for the first order of business, we are going to want to install our sleeving on the second portion of our Y-power adapter. Follow Steps 8, 9 and 10 making sure to adhere to all CAUTION warnings while doing so.

Step 20: Now that the sleeving is in place and installed, we need to cut two pieces of heatshrink and install those as well. Please refer to Steps 11, 12, 13 and 14.

Step 21: The next step is to remove the tape at the end of the four molex contact pins, as detailed in Step 15, making sure to not break off the contact pin tabs in the process. By now, your assembly should look similar to this:

Fig. 9

Step 22: We are now ready to install the last black molex connector. Grab your final black female molex connector and carefully follow Steps 4 and 5. Please keep in mind to follow all CAUTION warnings in these steps, and ensure that you pay particular attention to all instructions given as you can damage your computer components if you do not follow the directions carefully.

Step 23: Once the final black female molex connector has been installed, slide your heatshrink into position by following Step 17.

Step 24: With the last piece of heatshrink in place, follow Step 18, keeping in mind the tips given when heating heatshrink with a hairdryer.

Step 25: Congratulations! You have just finished successfully modding, sleeving and heatshrinking a 4-pin molex Y-power adapter!

Fig. 10

Terms of Agreement:

By using and/or following this guide, you are agreeing that I am not to be held responsible for any misfortune caused either to yourself, others, or any equipment involved. This guide was written with the best of intentions in mind, and as far as I know and can truthfully attest, is 100% accurate at the time of its publishing. If you wish to use (reprint) any part of this guide for personal or commerical reasons, please ask for permission first. I do not mind direct linking of this guide to other websites, all I ask is that credit be given where credit is due.

Thank you for taking the time to read this guide; through it, I hope I have at least inspired one person to be as hardcore about wire management and sleeving as I am. Questions, comments or suggestions about this guide can be directed to my eBay account, garetjax27.