mass of unsightly wires proposed solution

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I just got me a new case and power supply, The powersupply is a Enermax 651P-VE and should do nicely. The concern is the mass of wires hanging out of it, mainly the power wires for the disk drives. There are two heavy bundles of wires with no less than 11 5 1/4" power connectors and 2, 3 1/2" power connectors and both bundles are very long. I am thinking I can take the very long cables and remove both of them, then mount 2, 5 1/4" style power connectors (females) into the enermax powersupply case and make them both a real solid mount and then I can put a male 5 1/4" (molex) style on each cable bundle and then I can plug in and remove the cables as I desire. Next since I can plug and unplug the power cables at will, I can now mount them permently to the case in a very solid and well concealed manner bringing each cable over the top of the drive cage and down along side the cage to a second 5 1/4" female molex solidly mounted in an aluminum block that holds it very firmly. There will be a power outlet next to each drive slot and the cable to it should be nearly invisible and very well fixed into place. This will not cause a problem because I can easily unplug them from the powersupply to change it or work on it. At the drive cage I will have a short jumper with a male molex on each end and that will jump from the cage mounted socket to the drive. If there is no drive in that slot, then no jumper will be installed. The bracket holding the female molex sockets will be made of aluminum, about 1" wide and 3/8" thick, and will vary in length depending on how many power-sockets it will hold, min. 2 and a max of 6. If this works as well as I hope. it will look very neat and professional and will solve 1/2 my cable problems. There will be no visible drive cable power-wires they will be concealed completely inside the aluminum bar which is mostly hollow. A neat and professional solution to ribbon cables is still in the brainstorming phase, probably round cable solution.

thats a great idea... someone should make a case solution like that. You should send that to someone like Antec. If the case and PSU were constructed like that it would look a hell of a lot better. Also having plug ins at the PSU would remove the clutter from stuff thats rarely used (IE ATX12V Intel P4 plug, or the Aux connector servers use)

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Absolutly. every cable coming from the powersupply should come through a connector. That way you can easily make a custom cable that precisely meets your needs and it should not have any effect on your warrenty. Modifying the cables should not lock you into a permanent situation. You should be able to just make a new cable when it you change hardware.

This solves the cable problems nicely. But there are a few other problems with powersupplies. One is that there is no simple way to use a multimeter to check voltages and there should be easily accessable and neat looking test points.

Another feature I would like to see on powersupplies for Modders is leds to show valid voltages ie. 3, 5, and 12 volts. Actually I would like to see 2 bicolor leds for each voltage. Arranged in two rows, the top row would show the current state of that rails voltage. The lower led would be latching so that if any rail dropped below the preset limit for more than 1/2 cycle it would turn on and stay on until a reset button was pressed. Using bi or tri colored leds would allow monitoring for good voltage, overvoltage, and undervoltage conditions.

I would like to contact Enermax or Fotron, or other powersupply manufacturers and sell them on the idea of producing a speciality line of powersupplies just for the wild and crazy guys who overclock and mod there systems. Using the concept of race car builders and drivers. The advertising value of newsgroups and forums always talking about there hot new Enermax or Antron or fotron powersupply should make the sales of there powersupplies increase directly. Features like plug in cables, leds voltage monitoring, temp monitoring, fan monitoring, built in 120/12 volt relays for powering Peltiers/waterpumps etc.
The vast majority of computer users buy strictly on price. They don't have a clue on what they need or why they need it. But a select few, buy on quality and features this is the market I am thinking of. I can't help but think that I can sell a manufacturer on the idea of providing high quality/performance/feature rich powersupplys on a limited run basis and use them as advertisement/sales enhancements. By providing them to reviewers and the overclocking community. They get Name recognition and advertisement that they couldn't pay for. Yes they would be higher priced and the sales wouldn't be high due to that price; but the sales of there regular line should increase due to name recognition.

one other idea... this would be expensive but interesting. along with the PSU, have several testing stations which you plug inline by several components (IDE HDDs, mobo, etc.). These report back to the PSU and with a simple USB or SMBus add in connection, to the PC too. These would have your PSU adjust the power on each voltage so the devices get almost exactly 5V.

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Sorry I have been out of town lately so couldn't reply sooner. By testing station I assume you mean a test point where you could measure the voltage at that perphial. I think it would add considerably to the cost and I don't see a reasonable way to adjust the voltage for each test point without having an adjustable voltage regulator at each perphial device. Yes I agree this would be nice but too expensive. Perhaps at the motherboard only this would be practical and adjust the voltage for that point only. Still your thinking and thats good.

Grep