How many times have you been putting a case together, only to discover that one or two major power cables are just a tad bit short? Or, for that matter, you love a certain PSU but hate how the cables look?
In my case, I managed to buy an “oops” from eBay that needed a little love; it was a 900W mATX unit with short cables. This PSU was a total loss for a standard case, but I wanted to use it in an NZXT Hades chassis anyhow. That’s where NZXT’s premium sleeved power supply extenders come in.
Out of the bag
Slick packaging is something NZXT is getting good at
As I removed the cables from their packaging, I couldn’t help but marvel at their quality; all the shrink wrap was even, uniform, and positioned well. To put it another way, I no longer fear that these products are merely the result of a company jumping haphazardly on a trend to make money.
There was, however, a wee bit of disappointment: NZXT only offers three colors (two, if you don’t count black) and not every available cable can be had in those colors. On the other hand, NZXT does offer a cable for virtually every imaginable need.
Moving on to wiring the chassis, I initially planned to divide the cabling between system power in red and data power in white, but that left me in a lurch with the front panel, as those cables only come in black. Color issues aside, the front panel cables are well-designed and well-marked, just like the other premium cables.
Installation
As I began wiring the NZXT Hades, my aim was to hide the majority of the power supply’s original cabling behind the motherboard tray. I started with the 24-pin EPS12V connector and the 8-pin 12V AUX connector.
The 24-pin primary EPS12V power cable extension
Yeah, I had to use a non-matching extender.
You may notice from the pictures that the 8-pin AUX connector was too short, even with the NZXT extender, so I had to grab something from the parts bin.
Boo to the SATA power extender
From there, I moved to the hard drives with some white SATA power cables, which I consider to be a major disappointment. Rather than connecting to a SATA plug on the power supply, the NZXT extender attaches to a molex connector. I’m not certain if a SATA-to-SATA connector exists, but it would certainly be more efficient and make for cleaner wiring. As it is, one can easily use all of the available molex connectors on a power supply and still have empty SATA connectors.
Can't really see much of the SATA cables
To finish, I installed the remaining power cables for the GPU and the front panel. Because of the way I tidied up the wiring, a good portion of the white cables are sadly hidden.
All together now!
Another fully assembled view
Another fully assembled view
Nice and clean
Final thoughts
NZXT has a nice product that is not only incredibly useful, but priced well. NZXT has a habit of getting the Icrontic Stamp of Approval, and this is no exception.
Likes
- Quality and Workmanship
- An attractive alternative for making cables longer
- A way for one that doesn’t have the time or inclination to add cable bling to his or her case.
- Good value
Dislikes
- Not enough colors
- Not all cables come in all colors
- Broader selection of cable types (e.g. right angle adapters)
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