Sleeving flat modular cables

[LightningJC]

I know you can buy the braided modular cables from corsair but they are pretty expensive so I was wondering if anyone had sleeved their own PSU cables. As they come standard black I want mine to be white.

I have found some flat sleeving on moddiy and was wondering what would be the best way to do this, can you do it without taking the connector off or do you need to remove the connector to get the sleeve on?

[peterb]

Unless you can expand the braid enough to go over the cable, you need to take the connector off, or at least take the pins out of the connector shell. There are tools to do that, but you can sometimes improvise with something like a tiny flat blades screwdriver.

You need to make a note of the colours and locations for reassembly, and you need to make sure the wires don't snag the brace as you feed it through. You will need some heat shrink tube to stop the braid fraying and make a neat termination. You will need a heat gun (or at a push, use a hair drier) to shrink the heat shrink after positioning it.

You need to weigh up the cost in time and the risk of damage (and the cost of the braid and heat shrink) against the cost and convenience of buying them ready made.

[LightningJC]

Thank you for the advice. I can get 2m of sleeving for under £2 and I'm pretty good with heatshrink so the hard part will probably getting the connector off. Do you know what the tools to remove them are called or should I just try with a screwdriver? I wouldn't want to damage the pins.

[peterb]

You can buy tools to remove the pins, but they can be expensive. Usually there is a barb on the connector that engages with a dimple or cutout in the shell. The trick is to depress the barb so the pin can be withdrawn. It gets harder if there are multiple barbs! I have used a flat jewellers screwdriver in the past, a pair of narrow tweezers, and a bit of tube from an old telescopic aerial (just the right diameter for a 4 pin molex pin!).

You can use ingenuity and improvise, or look at some of the specialist modding websites for connector pin extractors.

[LightningJC]

Cheers, I will give it a go when I get the sleeving. I'll post some pics when its done (If it goes well)