Review: Ultra UV Green Cable Sleeving Kit

First off I would like to thank Case Mod God and Ultra Products for this great prize which I won in their latest month long contest.
Product: Ultra UV Green Cable Sleeving Kit
Supplied By: CMG and Ultra
Price: MSRP $19.99
First Impressions:
I’ve been after one of these kits for awhile as I am planning a new case at the moment so this kit could not have come at a better time. I was also planning to have some UV Cold Cathodes and since this cable sleeving is UV reactive then it will look even better than just under standard case lighting. My current power supply is just your average 350W but it is fine for what I need. The only problem has been all the messy and untidy cables filling my case and making it look ugly so hopefully this kit will help me rectify the current situation.
I chose the UV Green kit because my new case is going to be black with all green lighting but this kit does come in a variety of different colours for those of you that don’t like green. You can choose from Ultra’s great selection here.

A Closer Look:
Let’s see what we have here. The kit includes many lengths of several different sizes of sleeving, a few small lengths of some different sized heat shrink, and some coloured zip ties. The exact amounts and sizes as the rear of the packet reads are as follows:
1/2” Braided Sleeving (5 ft.)
3/8” Braided Sleeving (5 ft.)
1/4” Braided Sleeving (10 ft.)
1/8” Braided Sleeving (10 ft.)
9mm Heat Shrink Tubing (1 ft.)
20mm Heat Shrink Tubing (1 ft.)
25mm Heat Shrink Tubing (6”)
10 Tie Wraps (Coloured Zip/Tiger Ties)

Seeing as how I had already installed the sleeving on my PSU before I wrote this review I can only show you what is left but it is quite a lot. I would have to say there is more than enough sleeving for anyone to sleeve their PSU and other numerous components inside your computer.
Installation:
This can be an awkward process to begin with but once you get the hang of it, it’s really not that difficult. Just make sure you set aside a few hours because this can take awhile. A lot of the connectors on your PSU will need to be removed ie, the Molex Connectors (normal 4-pin connectors that go into hard drives and optical drives) and also any other connectors where the sleeving will not easily go over the connector. The connector you may have a lot of difficulty with is the main ATX power connector. It is made up of 2x rows of 10 pins making a total of 20 and thus a very large connector.
To easily remove molex and other connectors you can purchase small de-pinning tools that fit over the pins inside the connectors and then have a plunger to push the pins out. After installing my second cable sleeving kit I wish I had bought one of these because it would have made my life a lot easier. You can also buy a separate but similar tool to de-pin the main ATX power connector if you need to.
I had to use a thin, flat, strong piece of metal (end of tweezers worked well) to push the jagged sides of the molex pins in so they would slide out of the connector. It is a very tedious process and you can damage the pins if you are not careful.
Before I put on any of the sleeving I removed the cover from my PSU so that all the ends of the sleeving could go into it and I could put some heat shrink over it to make it look nice and professional when I was complete like so.

After I had removed the cover I de-pinned all the connectors that needed to be de-pinned and I got a piece of the largest heat shrink in the packet and put all the connectors through it so that it could be used at the very end like the above pictures shows. Do not forget to do this first or you may have problems later once you put all the connectors back on.
As this is a review and not a guide I won’t go too deeply on how to sleeve the cables but I will give you a few pointers. Measure up the length of cables with some suitably sized sleeving after you have de-pinned the connectors and start threading the cables into the sleeving. Sometimes it helps to tape all the pins together so they don’t catch on the sides of the sleeving. Be careful with the ends of the sleeving because they will un-braid themselves if you are rough.
With one hand, hold the sleeving tight over the cables while your other hand holds the sleeving and you end up pushing your hands together. This creates a bulge in the sleeving and now you need to tighten one hand and use the other to slide the sleeving along. If you try to just thread the cables through you will find the sleeving tightens itself and you will get nowhere.
Once you have sleeved the cables most people just cut some heat shrink and use a heat gun (much better than a hair dryer or lighter) to hold the sleeving on nicely. I found this wasn’t enough and sometimes the sleeving slipped out from under the heat shrink when you bend the cables around. To stop this from happening I used a small piece of electrical tape to hold the sleeving to the cables before I put the heat shrink over it. You can see the connectors below with the electrical tape underneath and the nice heat shrunk ends. You could also use the zip ties on the ends to stop it coming undone.

Observation:
Here is the final product, the sleeved PSU in all its glory. Doesn’t this look a lot better? I wish I could have shown you a before picture but like I said earlier, I did this review after I had installed the kit. I’m sure if you just looked inside your own un-sleeved case compared with this you will see a dramatic difference. Not only does this stuff look awesome but it helps to improve airflow in your case and we know everyone likes to have lower temperatures.

Conclusion:
This mod was definitely well worth the effort and as you can see for yourself it paid off inside my case. My PSU cables have never looked better. Now I need to get cracking on all those other small cables you can see to finish it off nicely. This kit is well priced and for what you get out of it I would definitely recommend purchasing one. They can be bought from Ultra Products in a range of colours like green, blue, red and orange for just $19.99 USD.
I would however like to see a bit more heat shrink with the kit as I ran out with my last PSU because I made a couple of mistakes. I was alright this time because I had the previous experience but it would be nice if the first timers had a bit more room for error. Another thing that would be great would be a Molex De-pinning Tool. It would make the process of sleeving your PSU much easier and less time consuming. On the whole this is a great kit and I would HAVE to recommend you go out and get one!
The Good:
Looks great
Improves airflow
Makes your computer easier to work on
Reacts with UV light (glows green)
The Bad:
Needs more heat shrink
No de-pinning tool for molex connectors
The Ugly:
Very Time Consuming
I give it 7/10

 

i might sound a bit rude or something... but why did u post it here? and not contact us to make it a proper webpage?????????
I will put it up, but if other sites have this same review it is actually not allowed to be posted, unless we have proper blah about using it.
Not a bad review though
"No de-pinning tool for molex connectors"
Most Kits don't because the tools used cost about 10 dollars to buy speratly, its really a cost factor there. :|
not bad pointers there...

 

I'm new and didn't know you took reviews from new members or whatever
I've posted it on some other forums but it's not like they are on front page or advertised. (I they will be sometime on CMG but not yet, they give each review some time on the front page and they have a lot backed up. Plus cmg already have a review for this exact product so they probs wont use mine.)
And thankyou for the kind words on the review

 

I like the review too. Now you'll remember to start taking pictures before you start. I got too excited with one or two products I was reviewing too, and forgot to take some "before" pictures. The trick with pictures is to take meaningful ones that help the reader understand where the difficulity is or why something works so well. Without pictures, most reviews would be half as interesting.

 

Good point there Al , make sure u dont drop the camera... or forget to have spare batteries around :| because thats what happened with my PSU mod p2 :|

 

Thanks guys, I really appreciate you adding this review to your collection
And with reviews, if they didn't have pictures I would say they areabout 20% interesting compared with ones with pics.

 

whichs means my Wise comment made back 200 years ago meant the truth "one picture is worth 2 billion^Inifite words"
Yes Pictures mean alot in a review, so do animations of How say airflow works in the case, or how the fan controller works

 

Animations are hard, well to be honest I haven't tried but I'm guessing they're harder

 

i have a question, where do u live in Australia?

 

I live in South Australia, Adelaide.

 

Too bad... i wish u lived in Brisbane, Southeast QLD, so then we could start Massive Lans up

 

I attend a relatively local LAN here in SA called 'Valhalla' which has people in excess of 500 sometime Always have a good time there, just went to one. Next one is 1st/2nd Oct I think.