Written By:
Date Posted: September 30, 2002

Testing

Testing was done with our Shuttle XPC SS51, with a Maxtor 60GB 7200RPM hard drive. Due to the design of the case, short or round cables (included with the bare bone product) are a must. The first test was done with the included flat ribbon, one device IDE cable, followed by the Vantec one device round IDE cable.

Generic Flat Cable

Vantec

As you can see, there is pretty much no difference in performance. The generic cable is about0.9kps faster, but the Vantec uses 0.4% less CPU. There is a bit of activity at the 28GB - 35GB marker, but nothing note worthy.

I half expected to see some serious data spikes as demonstrated in our Cooler Master Cable review, but there wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

As for case temperatures, there was no change as the cabling job was neat to begin with.

Final Words

Let's get a couple of myths out of the way about rounded cables. To begin with, they do not improve access speeds to your hard drive, or do anything for performance, in fact, poorly designed rounded cables can be detrimental. Secondly, they do not do much for case cooling if you're neat about cable management. Well, I guess I kind of contradicted myself there, as they will help if your cables are dangling all over the place, blocking airflow, but all it'd take is some tie wraps and some creative routing and you'll be fine. Then again, I've seen craptacular cable work done using round cables as well.

That being said, there is a market for round cables, and that audience would be those who like the look of round cables. I'll admit that if you're not neat, flat ribbon cables aren't the most attractive element in your case. Round cables do look better in my opinion, and if you route them properly, they can do a lot for case aesthetics.

IDE RAID junkies will be particularly pleased with Vantec's 1 device IDE cable. It's shorter than the standard ATA cable, and for RAID enthusiasts, they can all tell you that the best thing to do is to have one device per RAID channel. Even those with a solitary drive will benefit from a 1 device cable, as shorter cables means a more direct route to the IDE controller.

Pros: Quality construction, pull tabs are useful, and they look good.

Cons: Not necessary really.

Bottom Line: A nice product if you're looking for a change from the generic IDE cables. With Serial ATA coming though, which will address the performance limitations of current IDE drives, as well as using thinner cables, I personally wouldn't run out and buy a box of these.

Agree? Disagree? Discuss it in our forums.

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