Introduction

AKASA is a name that's probably familiar to all of you. They are noted for there cooling products, being both good from a performance standpoint as well as being easy on the wallet. HSF's and hard drive coolers all help to lower temperatures but when it comes to case cooling one thing that is often overlooked is the cabling. Having round cables can help to increase the airflow in a case, which is why AKASA have saw fit to market there own. Now AKASA also go one step further here in that these ones glow in the dark. AKASA has sent us 2 cables here for review today, their Floppy cable and their 45cm ATA133 IDE cable. Different and unique, lets take a closer look shall we?

First Looks

First looks of the cables were slightly confusing to me. Glow in the dark materials are not something I go looking for everyday but last time I checked I thought they were green? These cables are not. Naturally of course, upon inspecting them for the first time it was daylight, so I didn't expect them to arrive glowing, but like I said I did expect to see some sort of green cabling.

What I actually saw was some very cool silver effect braided cables. Yep that's right, when there not glowing they look just as cool. The outer rubber casing is the luminous part and in clear daylight its translucent showing off all of the braiding inside. If you look at them in a shadowy area then there is a green tint to the translucent rubber, but I expected the green shade to be more prominent than it was. The next thing I noticed was at each end of the cables at the plugs was a "tag" notifying you of what the plug is.

In the case of the IDE cable, this displayed respectively Master, Slave and System Board. On the Floppy cable it shows FDD on both ends. On both cables, the tag markings also feature the AKASA logo and website address too. Another bonus here with these tags is that if you needed to remove the cables just a quick pull on the tags will unseat them. Certainly not a big deal, but it is easier and feels safer than pulling the cables out. I always personally feel with generic cables that one day I'm going to pull and leave the plug in the socket whilst having the rest of the wiring in my hand. So I like these tags for that purpose. After this I just had to see the glow in the dark aspect so like any kid with a new toy it was into the darkest room in the house to get a look. Well they certainly glow! I wasn't able to get a decent image of them glowing, so my apologies for that, but I can assure you they do glow and I shall try to describe it.

At first they were not all that bright, but after leaving them in direct sunlight for a few days the glow intensified noticeably. The green glow they give off is a kind of eerie green glow and looks pretty cool. It's also not so bright as to be totally distracting as obviously, it's not like you can turn the glow off. Another thing I'd like to point out here is that these cables are labelled as being ATA133 compatible. All in all, good first looks with nothing bad to report and even some extra's I wasn't counting on.

Testing

Testing? Yes testing.

I've compared the cables to some generic flat IDE leads, just to see if there is any difference. I've not tested the Floppy cable other than to see that it works, as in my opinion the floppy cable is there more to finish off the set and complete the look. Having 2 Glow in the Dark rounded IDE cables and a flat grey floppy cable would look kind of silly...

Generic Cables

AKASA Cables

Well, the results speak for themselves. Whilst the benchmarks show that the AKASA "Glow in the Dark" rounded cables actually performed better than the generic flat grey cables, in everyday real world terms it's not like you will see a big increase in speed or anything. But this is fine, it's not like you would see a noticeable increase with any cables. At the end of the day, these cables work perfectly.

Conclusion

Glow in the dark cables are not going to be on the top of everyone's list, but for those of you with case windows looking for something new then these would certainly be something different. Maybe you have the window and the lights, but don't (or your significant other doesn't) want to have the lights on full time; you can still have some light in the form of these glowing cables. The glow isn't that distracting, being just bright enough. These cables are certainly different and would look great in say a water cooling rig with clear pipes, get a blacklight CCFT and some luminous water dye. CCFT on, the water glows; CCFT off, the cables glow : When there not glowing the cables look like they are silver braided which is a great look on its own. Those of you without a case window however are going to find the Glow in the Dark feature pretty pointless. They will still function perfectly well as normal cables, and being rounded they should help you achieve better airflow through your case.

Another bonus for those of you who just want to quickly check which drive is set to master or slave without having to get your head halfway into the case to inspect the jumpers, are the tags on each of the plugs. I couldn't personally say if the tags were there to be used as something to hold onto to remove the plugs, but they function that way and feel safer for it. If you are looking for rounded cables for your case, one thing that might be worth bearing in mind is that these cables are the same price or there about's as your regular rounded IDE cables. These cables are bit of fun and functionality and look great be it day or night. Thanks once again to for supplying the review samples.

AKASA UK:
AKASA Int.:

Pro's
They glow in the dark, how cool!
When it isn't dark they look like silver braided cables.
The tags on the plugs are great for removing them from sockets.
The tags also identify the plug.

Con's
The glow in the dark effect is pointless without a case window.

Bottom Line
If you have a case window and are in need of some round cables, then these will certainly go quite a way in providing that extra touch to "the look" of your case. If you don't have a window, the glowing effect will be lost on you.

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