A question we get asked by our customers is to do with cable management, but not the cable management of the PC itself, we are talking about the cable management in their home when they receive their new PC.
The question you might be asking?
Can I coil my power cable?
Is it safe to coil my cables?
Can I bundle my cables?
Can I fold together my mains lead?
These questions relate to the mains power cable, otherwise known as the ‘kettle lead’.
The first point we must make is that the cable we supply you with is the cable designed and certified for use with the power supply installed in your custom PC. This cable is of a certain length, a length deemed to be safe for the maximum load of 13a (13 amps), which is a standard UK 3-pin mains plug.
The cable is simply not designed to be folded, or coiled at all.
What happens when a cable is folded, bundled, or coiled?
A cable needs to have sufficient air surrounding it in order to allow any heat build-up, to efficiently dissipate, this is why in normal use the cable will feel cool to the touch and you will not notice any warmth to it, even with 1000w being drawn from the mains, a good quality, rated cable, will still feel cool or room-temperature, to the touch.
When the cable is folded or coiled this brings multiple loops of the cable together and thus prevents air from reaching enough of the cable. The situation is worse in a coil than in a fold, as with a coil you potentially have cables hidden deep within the coil which get no air whatsoever.
If your cable is folded, bundled, or coiled, then depending on the amount of current passing through the cable, you will be able to feel some warmth. With a significant amount of current load through the cable, this heat could build up to the point where the plastic material surrounding the copper wires becomes soft and even melt away, exposing the copper to the copper wire next to it, this will cause a shorting and could cause a fire.
There is a significant fire risk if you allow cables to get warm. When used correctly, they do not get warm at all.
Our advice is to loosely fold or coil a cable where there are only minimal points where the cable touches. Do not tightly coil the cable and do not coil it around anything.
Additional advice for extension leads and power blocks
Extension leads and power blocks, should not be used for powering your computer tower. This is the best advice we can give, as we do not know the quality of the extension lead, the length of the cable, the other devices attached to it, and more. The extension cable could be the cable to heat up and cause a fire, not the mains power cable for your PC.
A single 13amp wall socket is designed to power a single 13amp plug, the fact that you can go and buy a power block that gives you ‘8-sockets’ or more, does not mean that you could or should plug in 8x 13amp rated devices, it simply is not designed to work like that. What you can plug into a power block is devices totaling 13amp, so this could include your desktop PC, a monitor, printer and phone charger. At 230v UK voltage you are looking at a maximum power requirement of around 2500W-3000W (2.5KW to 3KW).
There is a handy Watts or Amps calculator you can use on the Electrical Safety First website.
You can also view some examples of amps and watts ratings of typical household appliances.
The London Fire Brigade website has further information on Cables, fuses and leads.
