Unboxing and Overview

The product box comes plastic wrapped from the retailer, so let’s take it off for a better look:

There isn’t much going on the outside, Cablemod want you to know that you are buying their cables and it is a premium product as well. I personally prefer clean packaging, and there’s really not much to say about cables so I am all for this.

The box has an outer sleeve as we see here.

Now we can see the business action of the packaging. A single flap holds the contents in place. Given the outer sleeve and the plastic wrap, I am ok with this not having any seal/sticker.

Inside we are immediately greeted to a satchel bag that contains the cables. But before we get to them, let’s take a look at this little note that lies underneath:

So far they are really keeping up with the theme of this being a premium product. I have personally experienced Cablemod support (went via a regular customer’s route too) and my personal experiences have been very good. They know that this is a super niche market and they have to provide good customer support, and so far all the right boxes have been checked.

Back to the cable bag:

The bag itself is good to hold the cables, but I would not use it to carry objects much heavier than them. The material used is fine to the touch, but thin and not elastic.

Ah we see that each cable is individually wrapped in plastic as well. Probably unnecessary, but I like it- once more this adds to the theme. There are also breathing holes in each wrap.

That’s a lot of cables! Let’s see what we got:

The oddball out of the way first, this 10 cm long Molex to floppy adapter just seems out of place. Not only does it clash with the rest of the kit, it is actually included with the PSUs that these cables work with. This has no place in here if I do say so myself, but since it is a simple fix away I won’t complain too much.

The 24 pin ATX cable is in the same fashion as the EVGA kit cable itself in that it ditches the in-line capacitors that are present in the stock cables for a cleaner appearance at the risk of slightly lower ripple suppression. Given how good these PSUs are, that really is not something to lose sleep over so I am all for this as well. Another difference, at least with the EVGA kit I got, is the use of thicker gauge wiring everywhere including the ancillary wires. If you have the 1600T2, you would note that the stock 24 pin ATX cable uses even thicker gauge wiring but the rest of the G2/P2/T2 lineup are on the same level as these.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to note that the sleeving used is paracord. Cablemod calls it their Modflex™ sleeving.

Now for the EPS cables. There are 2 4+4 CPU power cables which are both 70 cm long. Notice there isn’t any indicator to distinguish these from the PCI-E cables. This is something I would like to see implemented in the next revision just to cater to everyone. In the meantime, to distinguish these from the PCI-E cables, just remember that the latter come in 6+2 type (or just 6 pin):

Going back to the EPS cables, I noticed they implemented an interlocking connector for the 4+4 pins:

This is not a unique connector to them but again another example of a small thing that can help out end users and one that isn’t commonly used.

Now on to the PCI-E cables:

There are 4 6+2 pin cables that are 60 cm long and 2 daisychained dual 6+2 pin cables that extend to 75 cm long for the additional connector. As usual- these are ok if sticking close to the theoretical PCI-E power limits (150w for 8 pin, 75w for 6 pin) but I recommend using discrete cables if overvolting/overclocking past these power delivery limits.

The 2 pin part just clips on and does not interlock, and is also separated right at the PSU side itself just as with the EVGA individually sleeved kit. This way you can hide it completely if not needed.

There are 2 4x SATA cables (one 85 cm long and the other 70 cm long) and 2 2x SATA cables (50 cm long). I liked this a lot since this caters to people with large and small cases and also helps power storage drives as well as other accessories that use SATA for power without feeling like you are running out of options.

On the full size Molex end, you are more limited. What’s included is a 3 Molex cable (75 cm long) and a 2 Molex cable (50 cm long). To be frank, I would like to see everyone migrate from Molex to SATA anyway so I am all for it personally. But I can see how people with pumps/fan controllers/LEDs might want to get more- not in terms of the number of connectors but more so in terms of cables themselves to route to different places. I can’t fault them for this much though since the EVGA kit itself has the same configuration.

Now speaking of the EVGA cables,

These paracord sleeved cables are softer to the touch and bend to a tigher radius (top) compared to the EVGA cables (bottom). This may or may not be to your liking, but now you know.

Both are heatshrink-less and the wires are crimped into the connector rather than being flame sealed. I didn’t find any loose wires after a tug of each cable but time will tell how well they last.

Here you can see the Cablemod cables (top) have a lighter shade of red compared to the EVGA ones (bottom). This is completely a personal thing and both go well with, say, the Asus ROG red in the two Asus boards I have here.

An update to the retail kit has been the inclusion of cable combs that have been tailored to fit these. At least in the US via Performance PCs, these are included for free with the cables but I was not yet able to confirm if this is true everywhere. For example, Overclockers UK has no mention of the cable combs anywhere, even as a separate item for purchase.

These stick together like LEGOs but are easy to slide in/out accordingly. The combs have a protective wrap on the sides, and are clear aside from that.

You get 2 24 pin ATX cable combs, 4 8 pin PCI-E or EPS cable combs and 2 6 pin PCI-E or peripherals cable combs. This is not enough for all the cables, and hence the reason they call it a starter kit. Again, at least in the US you can buy more of these and in different colors too as a starter set or a la carte.

To use these, you simply separate the cables like so:

Then push the individual cables into place:

Take your time and don’t push too hard as you would (a) risk breaking the comb and (b) just bend the wire inside. The latter is what happened in my case, but hopefully this gives you an idea of how these work:

Yes, I am terrible at this. But if I can get the cables to be ever so lightly trained with these, anyone can!

Before we wrap up, a small note on performance. I used the stock cables on my EVGA 1600T2 for a lot of performance testing here of the other products. I then swapped to the EVGA kit for 2 weeks and then these cables for 2 more weeks. Even with the PSU stressed close to 100%, I had no stability issues with either cable set. So these cables are just as good as the stock ones from an overclocker’s perspective. To notice subtle differences, a load tester would have been handy but alas I do not have access to one.