Jumpexx

Okay, I want to see the underside of your desks, not the pretty top-down shots. That's where the truth lives!

I finally rebuilt my routing last weekend after the cat discovered the cable hammock. Current setup: mesh tray bolted to the rear rail, PSU and monitor cables in one bundle with hook-and-loop every 20cm or so, and a proper service loop so I can pull the whole rig out without unplugging anything.

What I keep going back and forth on is the basket vs. tray question. The tray hides everything but it's a nightmare to add one cable later. The basket is open and easy but it collects dust like nothing else. Have any of you actually lived with one for a year or more and still liked it?

Also, please tell me I'm not the only one who leaves a deliberate slack loop instead of pulling everything guitar-string tight!

Tray gang here. Bolted a metal tray under the back edge years ago and never looked back. The trick is getting one wide enough that you can drop a cable in without pulling the whole bundle out.

Baskets are fine too, honestly. My old desk had one of those under-frame wire baskets and it did the job until I stuffed a power strip in it and it started sagging.

Zip ties are the thing I'd push back on. Great for a permanent run, terrible for a desk where you swap stuff every few months. Velcro or those reusable silicone ties, every time.

Unpopular opinion, but I think most under-desk cable management is solving a problem that only exists when you look under the desk.

My take: a loose, gently looped bundle with a couple of hook-and-loop straps is easier to maintain, easier to troubleshoot, and less likely to trap heat around the PSU exhaust than a densely packed tray. Every super-tight build I've helped someone tear down has been a fight, and half the time something got yanked because there was zero slack.

The counterpoint is airflow and dust. If cables are blocking the bottom intake, tidy them. Otherwise I'd argue for "organized, not imprisoned." BinnedQueued, curious whether your tray has any venting at all or if it's fully closed underneath.

NotSoStock, that's a genuinely good point about the PSU exhaust! I hadn't thought about the tray acting like a blanket. Mine is mesh so it breathes, but I've seen solid plastic trays that basically seal the bottom of the case.

The service loop thing is exactly why I went with hook-and-loop. Have you tried the wide roll stuff instead of the pre-cut strips? You buy a roll, cut to length, and it wraps around a whole bundle in one go. Way better than stacking five little straps.

BinnedQueued, when you say wide enough to drop a cable in — do you mean the tray depth or the lip height? I keep picturing mine and I think the lip is the real bottleneck, not the width.

Lip height, yeah. Depth helps for the power strip, but the lip is what makes you swear when you're adding a cable at 11pm.

One cheap thing that worked for me: a length of that plastic J-channel trim from the hardware store, screwed along the back rail. Not pretty, but it holds the bundle off the floor and costs basically nothing. Ran it for two years before I got the actual tray.

LoopDreamer, if your tray is mesh you're probably fine heat-wise. Just check it every few months, mine turned into a dust felt mat by month six.

LoopDreamer, I'd add one more variable to the tray-vs-basket debate: cable stiffness. Thick sleeved cables and anything custom basically have a memory, and forcing them into a tight tray puts constant load on the connector ends. I went down a rabbit hole on this when I was making my own 12VHPWR lead — the thread "Repinning Seasonic PRIME 8-pins to one 12VHPWR: sense wire sanity check" Repinning Seasonic PRIME 8-pins to one 12VHPWR: sense wire sanity check covers the sense-wire side of it, but the routing lesson applies here too: give stiff cables a natural bend radius and let the tray follow the cable, not the other way around.

So my answer to the original question is baskets, but only the open-frame kind with a bit of sag room. Closed trays plus stiff cables is where things get ugly.