Mains power cables, IEC leads and kettle leads for racks, desks and comms rooms — UK plug to IEC, IEC to IEC jumpers, and the heavier connectors used on servers and PDUs.
The connector names, which are worth knowing
The lead that runs from a wall socket to a PC, monitor or printer is a UK plug (BS1363) to C13 — the one everyone calls a kettle lead. Inside a rack you want an IEC jumper, C14 to C13, running from a PDU to the equipment: shorter, tidier, and it does not waste a wall socket. Step up to C19 and C20 for high-current kit — larger servers, blade chassis, big UPS units — which are physically different connectors rated for 16 A rather than 10 A. Fitting the wrong family is not possible by accident, but ordering the wrong one is easy, so check the inlet on the device before you order.
Length, and why short is usually right
In a rack, cable slack is the enemy: it blocks airflow, hides labelling and makes a PDU impossible to work on. Jumpers come as short as 0.3 m for exactly this reason, and buying to the actual distance rather than defaulting to 2 m makes a visible difference to how a cabinet ages. On a desk the reverse applies — a lead that is fractionally too short forces the equipment out of position.
Use colour deliberately
IEC leads are available in several colours, and in a dual-fed rack that is an operational safety feature rather than decoration: A-feed in one colour and B-feed in another means nobody pulls both sides of a redundant supply during maintenance. Decide the convention before the first cabinet is populated.
Locking leads
Locking IEC connectors resist being vibrated or knocked out and are worth specifying for anything where an accidental disconnection means an outage. In a shared or third-party data centre they are often expected as standard.
Brands
APC, Microconnect, Cisco and DeLOCK, alongside power cords from the major server and networking manufacturers.
Trade pricing and business accounts are available for UK organisations, and bulk orders are welcome — request a quote.
