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Posted by Tyler Colp on November 21

Here are some ways to keep all your cables in order.

Your desk may need some help. Anyone with a neat PC gaming setup has learned the difficult way about the difficulties of cable management outside the PC case. You can’t pack it all under the panel as easily as in a good computer case. Your desk and the number of peripherals you use play an important role in the struggle to keep your desk tidy and orderly-the trick is to use the right tools to solve your particular combination.

Black Friday deals can help you save some money while taking advantage of these cables and keeping your desk spotless in the new year. I recently performed a major cable management on myself and figured out which ones worked and which ones didn’t work. This is my suggestion to wrap all these stray cables and keep them away in the simplest and cheapest way.

How you manage cables on your desk will help you determine which areas require the most work. It’s best to start at the top of the desk. Find all unnecessary cables and tighten them and pull them away. You need to deal with any excess cable length between the desk and the PC.

From there, you can begin to determine which cables may need to be loosened, for example if you move the monitor back and forth on your arm, or if your mouse needs a lot of slack. It's best to consider all of these now, because some of the solutions below are not permanent, but if you need to readjust in the future, it will be difficult to undo.

Trilancer Reusable Cable Ties | 50 Packs | Black | Amazon $6.99 These cable ties are very easy to wrap around your cable and can be reused.

If you haven't used cable ties, you have missed one of the real organizing pleasures in life. Cable ties can help turn the cable nets on your desk into a neat bundle, or help you tie them out of sight. They are very easy to wrap around a bundle of cables, or you can remove them if you need to exchange things.

These reusable Velcro patterns can help you avoid trying to cut plastic cable ties from expensive wires. If you plan to spend some time managing all the cables, they also allow easy adjustments. I usually use them to twist all the cables from the monitor to the PC. In this way, the cables can be easily hidden.

OHill cable clamps | 16 packs | white | Amazon $8.99 These cable clamps can be glued to a large number of surfaces and hold the wires well.

In terms of how the wires are organized, cable clamps offer a lot of creativity. You can stick them on the desktop to fix useful cables, such as USB cables or wireless mouse dongle. You can also install them under or on the side of your desk to help route cables out of sight.

I like to keep some for adding any new cables. They help to make visible cables look cleaner than laying there directly, and they are easy to remove if you find that a location is unnecessary. If you want a minimal YouTube-ready "battle station" with hardly any cables in sight, these are not ideal, but they should organize any practical settings.

Simple wire and cable cover kit | 5 packs | 17 inches | Now at Amazon for $16.95 These J-shaped cable sleeves help keep your cables invisible. They are easy to install with double-sided tape.

These cable management J-housing kits are much more useful than I thought. They are essentially a long piece of plastic into which you can stuff the length of the cable. You put a strip of double-sided tape on it and place it in the most discreet place possible.

For my desk, they are great for leaning against the back and side walls. It is easy to press cables into it and keep them organized. The only problem I foresee with this setup is that if you use a standing desk like mine, it won't move. These are most suitable for cables that do not need to be stretched.

These cable covers are available in black and white. If you are a wood grain enthusiast, they may not match your settings, but for most desks, they won't attract much attention. However, cable stretching between each cable is unavoidable, so keep this in mind when planning where to place them.

EVEO Cable Management Sleeves | 4 packs | 19.5 inches | Amazon $8.67 These zippered cable sleeves help hide all loose cables.

Cable ties are great, but they don’t completely hide your twisted cable army. If you want to make things more subtle, one of the zipper cable covers is a good addition. They are easily wrapped around thick wires and zippered. My favorite is being able to swap cables in it. There is nothing worse than removing all cable management for a new mouse or keyboard.

The only problem with them is that they are a bit bulky, so they can't really disappear. . These big sleeves are difficult to hide completely out of sight. You count on the way they blend into the shadows under the desk. If you have RGB strip lights or something there, you are obviously using these lights. But even so, a smooth sleeve looks much better than a loose bundle of cables.

Elgato Wave Microphone Cantilever | Amazon $99.99 The Elgato Microphone Cantilever has been researched and is very easy to readjust. It can accommodate various microphones and has a useful cable sleeve for your XLR cable.

Although not a cheap solution, the monitor and microphone stand can also help you organize your desktop cables. You can even use this feature in the current settings. Don't leave these cable management options idle as I did before writing this guide. They are a good starting point and can help you figure out how many excess cables need to be hidden.

Take the Elgato Wave Mic Arm that I personally use as an example. It has a groove on its arm into which you can slide the XLR cable to hide it. It's easy to be lazy and skip using it, but if you slide the cable into it and collect the remaining slack, you can avoid a lot of mess at the top of the table.

The monitor arm can also have this function, which is usually used to help you connect the cable from the end of the arm to the base. If they don't, I recommend using a cable tie to move the cable down the arm. Anything that reduces cable sagging around the most obvious part of the setup will help make your desk feel less cluttered.

Before joining PC Gamer as the associate editor, Tyler worked in games, game culture, and hardware for more than ten years. He conducted in-depth reports on the community and games, and criticized sites such as Polygon, Wired, and Waypoint. He is interested in the weirdness and fascinating of the game, and spends time exploring the story and talking with relevant people. Tyler likes to be immersed in games such as Final Fantasy 14, Overwatch and Dark Souls to see what makes them tick and find out what is worth talking about. His goal is to talk about games in a playful way: broken, beautiful, and bizarre.

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