EL IDE Cable

Today with all of the case modding going there has been a lot of very interesting products showing up. Everything from cold cathode tubes in any color, even ultra violet, to rounded IDE cables of every color. CoolMax has decided to take it one step further with a lighted IDE cable.

The CoolMax EL IDE Cable is pretty much your standard rounded cable. They are less restricting for air flow than the standard ribbon cables are, as well as making the inside of your case looking a lot cleaner. The cable is surrounded by a aluminum mesh shielding and sports the EL Neon wire twisted around the cable. They come in 2 different lengths and 5 different colors. They are also available for floppy drives as well.

Features...

• Standard ATX form factor
• Neon Wire EL IDE / FDD Round Cable
• Great for Side Window Case or Case lighting products.
• Supports Two Ultra ATA/100 or two Ultra ATA/133 hard drives
• These awesome round cables are covered with Aluminum mesh shielding.
• ATA 100 / 133 IDE Round Cable: 18" or 24" with 2 devices
• FDD Round Cable Length: 18" with 1 device
• Color available: Blue, Green, Red, Purple, Yellow

The power to the cable is supplied through a 4 pin molex which is connected to a small converter box. The connector isn't pass through so you will lose one connector from your power supply unfortunately. Installation other than this is no different from any other cable out there on the market now.

My only concern with this cable was that when the EL Neon wire was lighted up, was it going to cause any interferance with data transfer along the wires. So I ran the IDE test in Sandra a few times with a regular rounded cable and then with the EL IDE Cable and only seen 5 points difference between the 2 cables and it was in the EL IDE Cables favor so data loss I don't believe will be a big concern.

Overall the EL IDE Cable is a pretty cool product. Its added something to case modding that hasn't been there yet and has a unique styling of its own. Peronsally 1 or 2 of these in a system would look really cool, but I don't think you would want more than that as it would take away from the uniqueness of them. The only bad I could really see with this cable was the 4 pin molex. It would be nice to have a pass through connector so that a connector on the power supply isn't compromised. Other than this small thing I give this a big thumbs up!

A big thanks goes out to Terry at E Powerhouse PC for sending us this sweet cable! If you would like to purchase one for yourself you can do so here.