Cable management is one of the highest-value, lowest-cost improvements you can make to a gaming setup — it takes an afternoon and rarely costs more than $30–40.
Start with a plan, not a purchase
Before buying anything, unplug everything and note which cables actually need to reach the wall versus which ones just need to reach a power strip under or behind the desk. Most of the visual clutter comes from routing every cable independently instead of bundling them.
The basic toolkit
- Velcro cable ties — reusable, cheap, and enough for most setups on their own.
- A cable tray or basket — mounts under the desk to hold a power strip and excess cable length.
- Cable clips or a raceway — for routing cables along the back edge of the desk instead of letting them hang.
- A single, accessible power strip — reduces the number of cables running to the wall to one.
A simple routing approach
- Mount the power strip to the underside of the desk or inside a cable tray, not sitting loose on the floor.
- Route each device’s cable along the back edge of the desk to the power strip, using clips to keep them off the floor.
- Bundle parallel cables (like monitor + peripheral cables running the same direction) with velcro ties every 15–20cm.
- Leave a little slack near connectors — cables pulled perfectly taut are more likely to disconnect or wear out.
Where people over-spend
Expensive sleeved cable kits look nice in photos but rarely change how the setup actually looks day-to-day once cables are routed and out of sight. Spend there only after the routing basics above are handled — see our Best Gaming Setup Under $1,000 guide for how this fits into a full setup budget.