Be Excellent To Each Other

I seem to have 100's of cables behind the TV and on my desk.

My desk has 1 Desktop and 1 Docking station, 2 monitors, keyboards and mice.

What do you folks use to keep the cables tidy?

Bluetooth

But seriously. Twist ties, velcro strips and cable ties for the permanent bits. Top tip! Use cables that are the right length to avoid clutter

Desk undertrays are a Godsend, too.

Selective perception

I just push them off the back of the desk so I don't see them. There is quite a bundle of them on the floor but that's mostly hidden by some other stuff that I keep meaning to tidy away so it's not really an issue.

Trunking.

Run them outside the house.

Spray them the same colour as the wall.

Cover them with a tapestry.

I have a large TV stand, all the cables are behind it and hidden from view

The stand backs onto a wall and behind that is the understairs cupboard.

So I drilled a hole and have some things such as the AMP and network switch under the stairs

Same sort of thing with the PC all hidden behind the desk

I will tidy the PC once or twice a year, the TV gets done when I need to move it for decorating the living room etc

Don’t you just push them behind the TV?

Not if the TV is on the wall.

I reckon mine are going to be the worst of anyone here, though.

COME AT ME BROS/LADY BROS

Pics, please.

They're so expensive too, you'd think you'd take care of them better.

No chance. Not with the remnants of 3 PCs I had in the same place, numerous headphone amps and pre amps and etc. Seriously I am actually ashamed at what is going on behind my desks at home. The desk surfaces don't look too much better either. One day I am going to sort it all out*


*biggest lie ever.

As I look at my TV stand, I have 17 consoles underneath it... I also have a desk with my PC on in the same room.

I reckon my cables are going to be massively untidy but it doesn't matter as the TV stand is in the corner and the PC cables are all under the desk.

We have a floating TV unit where all the stuff to make things happen sit, I stuck a few runs of self-adhesive mini conduit to the underside of it to hide all the cables. You can easily cut it to length so cables can come in and out wherever is convenient.

Our TV is on the wall. Velcroed to the back of the TV are an Amazon Fire TV stick, a RetroPie, a SteamLink and an HDMI switcher.

I then have very short HDMI cables for plugging everything into the TV, so they don't stick out and are basically invisible. I then run all of the power cables to a six-gang power adapter that is resting on the TV wall bracket (and is invisible when viewing the TV), and the power cable for that comes down behind the TV, behind the soundbar under the TV, behind the radiator under all that, and across to the power socket on the bottom of the wall.

So I just need to get some trunking to hide that cable, and the power/optical cables that the soundbar uses.

It's surprisingly neat, given how shit I am at DIY and things like that.

Are all the consoles cabled up too? Thankfully my consoles are set up in three different places which keeps the cables to a minimum. 17 would be a nightmare.

When you go to bed at night the cables all come alive and spend all night wrapping themselves around each other.

Pretty much yeah, there's a few that I need to pull out and plug in elsewhere but on the whole they're ready to go at a moments notice. You know, just in case I was ever called on to do such a thing.

I'll see if I remember when I get home.

The mess that is my desk

Not sure why the pics are at random angles

That - trust me - is fucking amateur hour.

Those cables look fine to me, although I would say that as my computer desk is much worse.

The thing about making cables all neat and tidy is that it usually just makes it a fucking nightmare when you want to rearrange things or swap something out.

That's my excuse anyway.

Somebody has been stealing from pubs...

No the pub was closing. I asked for the mat, and a few Guinness glasses..

And then you stole their computer.

Guilty conscious? That "somebody" could have been anybody...

always guilty

I assumed this was about controlling half cyborg soldiers from the future. I am disappoint.

Under my PC desk

Room has always needed some work, which is happening soon, I'll be evicted as we are making the space into a kids room

As someone who had cable management as part of his day job for five years I am pretty shocking.

If I'm getting paid for it during the day, there is no way I'm doing it for free in my own time.

This is the main reason I haven't jacked in software engineering to open a smokehouse, and is the reason I don't computer in my own time now.

What's odd is that I haven't written code in a year and the compulsion hasn't come back.

My desk at home currently has so much crap on it I can't even see the stuff that the cables are plugged into! Making the IKEA standing desk, the big uhd monitor and surface pro 4 the most spectacular set of bad purchases I've ever made.

Is Grim... home yet? I want to see some cables!

Just a sharp nip usually does it for me.

Where’s your cables?

I was a cable-off between the worst offenders. Winner takes all. All the cables! Then displays them spewing out the sides and poking out from underneath of his TV like a mad man.

I'm looking at my TV stand now and the only cables I can actually see are from my Xbox headset and my Atari 800 as that's on the floor. The rest are all nicely hidden (and are a complete mess) so there's no way I'd win.

That's kind of neat though.

It really isn't. They're tangled as fuck.

You smashed it. Well done.

I think there are sixteen power plugs back there.

Yeah mine looks like Grim...'s. Just all piled up. Recently I set up some head fi at my mother's.



Which I had put off for months and months because the cables were badly tangled. It's funny, because inside my PCs look like this.





Yet outside and around the room is terribly messy and untidy.

I just want it so it is easier to clean

I tried to get a picture down the side of my TV.. This is the best I could do.

The Vision wins.

There's barely anything there! And he's tied one of his cables up like a posho.

Yes but it was easier for me to put Tetsuo the Iron Man's picture on his photo.