Cable management is for testing. That’s what I said to myself until a few weeks ago, when I woke up again splitting the big, tangled bottom of the ethernet cables to vacuum my desk.
While wireless connectivity is the norm for movie fans and even audiophiles these days, gamers have made our lives difficult. We called latency our enemy. So we still connect the three HDMIs from the three consoles to the TVs, winding three more ethernet cables from the modems to the three consoles. And, of course, we still connect these three consoles to the wall. After a year of staying at home and accumulating both play equipment and office equipment, my floor looks like the bottom of the Strega Nona pasta dish.
There are fixes, of course. Look for any video designed to guide players on their cable management journey, and you’ll find a thumbnail on YouTube of a faded smile norm that holds a drill and several finger traps (these are cable clips) – home with high stakes and high effort “improvement projects”. Personally, I’m not about to have surgery on my desk. And if I have six more hours on my hands, I won’t spend them on my stomach on the floor of my office. I’ll play games for him.
You may be handling the cable lazily. Here are some clever but effortless ways for players to keep their floors and walls tidy.
The cables you have
This doesn’t have to be rude, but you wouldn’t have so many cables to handle in the first place if you bought the right length. If you can’t differentiate the floor from the local forest, your cables are probably too long.
If you have funds, consider new cables. Measure the cable path around a room and add another 8 inches – better a little too long than too short. Purchasing high-quality cables with minimal loosening will reduce the likelihood of reconnecting in the future. And because it can be annoying to remove the cables when they’re hidden behind a wall-mounted cable circuit, make a durable high-speed HDMI device that you probably want for your Xbox One X or PlayStation 5 anyway. long term.
Cable management equipment
What you’ll need depends on your setup. For example, if your computer sits above your desk, you may want to mount a surge protector on the bottom of your desk so that only one cable connects to the wall. If your TV is wall-mounted and you hate those HDMI cables hanging from the Nintendo Switch, you may want to get the paint to match the color of the racing cable with your wall.