Cables for Audio, Video, Computers… everything — and cheap!

Tuesday, Sep. 28 2004 | Author: JC

My father ran across Cable Wholesale while he was building his house, and showed it to me the other day while we were looking for a very long component cable for the home theater room we’re setting up in his new house. I thought I’d post it here, because they ship very quickly, have a tremendous selection of stuff, and are very inexpensive. I ordered extension cables for my monitor, keyboard, and mouse and it cost me something like 10 bucks. Just in case you ever needed a reminder where Best Buy and Circuit City really make their money… a 6 foot extension cable for keyboard only from Circuit City (made by Belkin, of course) would have run me $16, just for the one cable (more than 10 times the equivalent cable from this place). I bought:

USB Type A Male Type A Female extension cable, 6 feet — $2.25
SVGA monitor cable, Male Male, 10 Feet — $6.50
PS/2 keyboard extension cable, 6 feet — $1.57

We also bought several 35 foot cables (S-Video, Component video, Composite/RCA video only) and 2 monitor cables (25 and 10 feet) and a 2 port KVM switch. The total of his and mine came to less than 60, including ground shipping. He was also very impressed with their telephone support when he called them on a previous occasion to order CAT-5 to wire his house — they were knowledgeable and didn’t try to upsell him. Works for me. Oh, and you can use coupon code “CAT2244” for a 10% discount on top of the already ridiculously low prices.

So where do you guys shop for this stuff? Have you found anything better? Please post your experiences below. :-)

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8 Responses for "Cables for Audio, Video, Computers… everything — and cheap!"

Rob

September 28th, 2004 at 10:50 pm
1

Not sure if their prices are better, but I’ve received great service and good prices from newegg.com (25′ Cat5E cable for $4.00.) This year I assembled a PC from parts bought through their site and their reviews helped steer me clear of the junk. I saved a couple of hundred bucks over a store bought box and had a good time piecing it together. They’re definitely worth a look.
JC

September 28th, 2004 at 10:52 pm
2

I’ve bought PC parts from newegg before… think their cable prices are higher. I usually buy my PC stuff from compgeeks.com, directron.com, frozencpu.com, and occasionally tigerdirect.com or newegg.com :-)
Netaku

September 29th, 2004 at 2:45 am
3

Just a TMYN moment: Cables are cables are cables. Never get sucked into buying Monster cables or crap like that; there’s nothing magical about them that make your games and movies look better than they would with cheaper cables. So long as they are shielded and not made out of TOTAL garbage (like the cheap cables you can get from Radioshack) there should not be a significant performance hit between what you’d get with “high-quality” cables. They do tend to last longer than other cables, but you could probably buy three pairs of generic cables or make your own before coming close to how much you would have spent on one Monster cable or something like that. Just buy the standard or high-quality Radioshack brand cables or build your own and you’ll be fine.
waylman

September 29th, 2004 at 10:42 am
4

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for the link. I need to buy a bunch (6 to be exact) of XLR (microphone) connectors and was going to run down to the local Radioshack (where we usualy go for such bacis stuff as there really is no other local sorce) but look at the difference: RS Catalog page – $5.99 each vs. CW catalog page – $1.32 each. Wow! I can buy 4 for a little less than the price of one.

One thing I did notice is that they require a minimum of $10 per order, but I’m sure I can find something else to add to the order. Besides, I couldn’t get 2 for that little from RS.

If there service is as good as there prices, they’ll be filling all my cabling needs from here on out.
JC

September 29th, 2004 at 11:47 am
5

Definitely netaku. I pounded that into my dad’s head when he was buying speaker wire. The radio shack guy was trying to sell him hundreds of dollars of monster cable because it was “so much better” and he (the 6 dollar an hour clerk) swore that he could hear the difference in his… bull. Maybe the difference over a wet string, but not over any other decent 12 gauge speaker wire wire. 60 bucks worth of 12 gauge wire from lowes and he was good to go.

From this place, though, the stuff is so cheap that even their “premium” is dirt cheap… not much reason to build it yourself unless you really want to feel geeky. :-)
BC

November 19th, 2004 at 2:29 am
6

Thank you so much for the site link! I usually do alot of cable/connector shopping at http://www.mcmelectronics.com. Their website stinks for browsing, so you really need their paper catalog they can mail to you to browse more easily. The site you pointed out is going to come in really useful. I found while running about 25′ + 10′ of cheap RCA cable for HDTV from my PC upstairs to the 57″ HDTV downstairs that the top of my TV screen has a bending effect. I am told it has to do with the quality of the video cables. When I say I am using cheap cables, I mean cheap price and quality (what do ya want for 25′ stereo RCA cables rigged for component video, especially since they were like $2.25 ea. in 1992 or something). I’m going to try some premium component cables from these guys. Generally cable quality doesn’t matter, EXCEPT in long runs. That’s my theory anyway. I’ll post if the bend effect on the top of my HDTV is eradicated with these cablewarehouse component cables. The price looks fantastic! I just need to verify I order enough length if I want to move the TV around some.
Brian H. Young

February 27th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
7

Thank you for this info. I just placed an order for approx. $350.00 and saved a bunch.

Good job.\
I will share this site with my IT friends.

byoung
hyperionrisk.com
F

January 17th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
8

Coupon code “CAT2244″ doesn’t work… I placed an order 2007.01.17. Didn’t give me an error message or anything.

Great prices though, thanks!