Power Supply Sleeving Guide

Looking for a sleek way to present your power supply’s ugly cabling? There are several methods of cleaning up the wire jungle, be it electrical tape, split loom, wire wrap, or expandable sleeving. This guide will assist you in your quest for a case with higher performance, and much better looks, especially if you have a case window.

A warning note before we begin, try this guide at your own risk, opening your power supply will void it’s warranty and could potentially shock you if you’re not careful. Ocmodshop is not responsible for any damage that could occur to your machine, now lets get started.

 

Items needed

• Paper clip, push pin, jewelers/Small screwdriver (or Molex pin extractor if you’d like to spend the money)
• 2 feet of 3/8” and 1 foot or less of ¾” heat shrink
• 5 feet 3/8” and 5 feet ¾” expandable Sleeving (depending on the length of your wires, you may need 10 feet of 3/8”)
• Lighter or heat gun
• Masking tape
• Scissors
• Zip ties (optional)

Out of the many choices of wire management out there, sleeving looks the most professional and is the most customizable to fit the color scheme of your case. You can find a wide variety of colored sleeving and heatshrink from mod stores on the web, like Performance-PC’s and SVC.com. To start off, first remove your power supply from your pc.

Flip the on/off switch several times to clear out any electricity (note: this might not remove it all, but it helps, be very careful when opening a power supply – if you wanted to be extra cautious, wait a day with the psu turned off) Remove the 4 screws keeping the cover on, and remove the cover as well.

The reason behind cracking open your PSU is to make sure that all the sleeving goes far enough up the wires, into the casing of it for a cleaner look. At this point you might want to label each strand of plugs with a piece of masking tape as to what purpose they serve in your machine (i.e. optical drives, hard drives, fans, etc)

Next, its time to get working on taking the molex plugs off so you can slide the sleeving over it. My favorite way is using a simple medium sized paperclip – If this is too big for your PSU a push pin works well (you could also use a jeweler’s screwdriver with a flat head, like the kind for repairing glasses, but paperclips are free).

On the female molex connectors, slip the end of an un-stretched paperclip on the outside of one of the 4 pins, on each pin there are 2 little clips that need to be bended in, so you can remove the cable from the plastic housing. Push the paperclip in on both of them and slide the cable out.

Repeat this procedure on each of the pins, until you have all of the plastic housing’s off. (Optionally you could use a molex pin extractor, which is easier, but isn’t worth it if you only plan to sleeve one or two PSU’s) Set them aside in a safe place, and then bring out the masking tape again. Place tape over the pins that were in the housing, this prevents them from snagging on the expandable sleeving. Don’t worry about the order of the wires, later on in this guide, I’ll explain which one goes where incase you forget.

 

Get out your expandable sleeving now. I chose a red and gray color scheme, with the sleeving red and the heatshrink gray. Do an eye measure of how much sleeving you’ll need from the inside of the psu to the first molex. Use scissors and cut the sleeving at the required length, then use a lighter to melt the ends of each section of sleeving cut. By melting the ends slightly, the sleeving won’t fray, and it keeps it neat and tidy.

Slide the sleeving on and prepare the next section, using the same method. After you’ve got all the sleeving on one strand of wires, get out the heat shrink and cut off an appropriate sized piece off, and slide it up the strand over the sleeving.

From here, get out the molex’s you put away before, un-tape the pins, and use your paperclip or screwdriver to bend the pins back to their outward positions

 

On one side of the molex plugs you’ll see the numbers 1,2,3,4. The pins go in accordingly.
• 1 – Yellow (+12v)
• 2 – Black (ground)
• 3 – Black (ground)
• 4 – Red (+5v)

It doesn’t matter if you confuse which black wire goes into 2 or 3, because they’re both grounding.

When you push the wires back into the molex, you should hear a small click. If you don’t hear a click, then you might not have them in all the way – so make sure to check by giving a little tug on the wire. After the molex is back on the wires securely, take out your lighter, heatgun, or other method to heat things up. Position the heat shrink appropriately (what you think looks good) and heat it up.

Voila! You’ve sleeved your main wires.

 

To Sleeve floppy connectors, its pretty much the same as the regular in terms of sleeving and heatshrink, but removing the plastic connector is different. For a floppy connector you’ll need something smaller than a paperclip – the push pin works perfectly for this. Take the push pin and push it down on the outside contacts.

 

The way these lock into the plastic housing is much easier than the main wires, all you need to do to put them the right way back, is use your fingers to bend them back up before pushing it back into the slot. The plastic housing on the floppy isn’t numbered however, but to put the pins back in order is just as easy. There is a separator of plastic, that makes one pin slot stand out, the singled out hole, is the red wire, to the left of it are the two black wires, and the far left is yellow. The picture below gives you an idea of what I mean.

The ATX connector is the trickiest to sleeve, seen as how there are so many wires! The easiest way to get the ATX connector apart is with a molex extractor tool, but if you’re going the way of office supplies, like most of this guide, you can use staples. Slide the bent staple in the side of the pin area, push the pins in, and slip the wire out. The way to remember where each specific wire goes is to label the same colors in alphabetical order. Below is a detailed picture for reference.

Tape like you would for the main power wires, measure the distance of sleeving needed, and then slip your 3/4” sleeving up the wires. The same method goes for heat shrink as well, cut off two good sized pieces, and slide them onto the ends of the sleeving. Remove the tape, and use the picture above to easily put them back where they belong. After you get the ATX connector back on, shrink the heat shrink with your choice of heating tool, and you’re good to go.

Conclusion

That’s about all there is to it, the benefits of a sleeved power supply are not only aesthetic, but help with performance too. The cleaner a case is, the more air can be distributed, and heat dissipated.

While doing this mod, you might concider working on any other power supply related mods, its easiest to do them all at once, so why not take the plunge, and cut out the stamped fan grills or tap into the power of your PSU to add an led.

When all is done, install your power supply back into your case and hook it back up to your components. Enjoy your hard work, and great looking power supply!