Have you ever wanted to sleeve your own cables and not know where to begin. Well, I was in the same boat. I practiced on a pair of old cables and I suggest if you have an old PCIe cable around, try practicing on that first before you disassemble your good PCIe cables. I wanted to do this the most econimical way I could. I made my own pin extracter tool - for pennies. I had read that if you purchased one of these, they are often flimsy and do sometimes break. You can purchase these from Frozen CPU and they will cost you about $24. I have seen them go as low as 13 bucks on ebay.
But, If you would like to make your own, for pennies, take a large paperclip and uncoil it. Then you have two ends. Take a hammer and hit the paper clip on the end a few times to flatten it like a screwdriver. It may take a few hits and you want to make sure you hit it against something solid like a metal vise or anvil or any piece of scrap metal that can allow the hammerhead to flatten the metal.
....and this is what you get
I used a bench grinder to shape the metal so that it was flat on each side and thin enough to go between the PCIe plastic housing and the metal connector. You can flatten it more with the hammer but it's hard to get it accurate. It may take a few times but its a free solution (well pennies) and you can always make another if it breaks. Mine never did.
You only have to take one of the sides of the paperclip and insert it down the side of the PCIe housing. There, you will bend the retaining pin back into position.
Once you have driven the pin extracter down each side, the cable should come right out of the housing. If it doesn't, try it again on each side of the metal pin. This is what you should get and the second picture is what you are trying to bend down.
Once the pin is extracted, put tape on to the end of the pin to allow it to pass easily throgh the sleeving material. It can be anything you choose. Nice thing about using blue painters tape is that you can use it over and over and it keeps sticking and is easy to peel off. One little scrap can pass many a wire.
Make sure you pre trim the sleeving material to go the full length from the tip of the metal pin on one end of the wire to the full length the opposite end. The sleeving material is like a chinese finger trap and can be adjusted along the wire for final fit. Once you get it sleeved, there's a couple of options here. Either you can use black shrink tubing or you can heat the end of the sleeving material and compress it over the pin for a cleaner look. Position the sleeving material past the first metal knob holding the wire in place.
Past the knob
Now heat the sleeving and taper the molten material with your fingers towards the end of the pin.
Now that you have the sleeving tapered at both ends of the wire, take your fingernail or a small screwdriver and bend the tabs on the pin outwards. They will be pushed in from removing the pin from the PCIe plastic housing.
Now insert the pin back in to the PCIe housing
Make sure the pin clicks back in place. It helps to remember the orientation the pin came out for easy insertion. When you are finished, all the metal pins should look like this. As you can see, there are grooves on each side of the metal pin for insertion of the homemade pin extractor.
That's it, your done with the first one. Just repeat for the other wires until you are finished. Pay attention to the location the wires should go so that you don't confuse where to plug it back in. I would do one at a time although if you want to take all the wires out at the same time, there are wiring diagrams on the net. Just do a search for PCIe wiring diagram. I would personally do one wire at a time.
You can purchase sleeving at any local Fry's or electronic store and you can get paracord off of ebay for around 5.95 for 50 feet or 9.99 for 100 feet----free shipping. My paracord arrived in 3 days from purchase.
Cut the paracord to length. I used a wire cutter because it crimped the end of the paracord and didn't fray it. I then lightly used a lighter and burnt the tip of the paracord to prevent fraying while sleeving. Make sure you use the wire cutters to grab ahold of the white innards on the paracord to remove it. You will be left with a hollow tube.
I spent a total of around 20 dollars and I have enough paracord to plenty of sleeving.
My finished product
For 24 pin PSU cables, it is the same procedure. The pins are slighly different but they have the two wings on each side of the pins that needs to be depressed. You don't need to compress both at the same time as the tool from frozen CPU shows. I think that's why these tools are so flimsy and break.....they have to be thin enough to insert on each side simultaneously. This isn't necessary, especially if you slighly bend the last 2-3 mm of the tip of the homemade extraction tool downwards and direct it towards the locking tabs.
Standard 4 pin molex are also very easy and you can look right down molex connector and see the pins. Great fun!
Good luck and have fun. I spent 20 bucks to do those cables above along with another 8 pin motherboard cable and a 6 pin PCIe cable and still had all those bundles left over for more sleeving.