Title: Risers, 1x and 16x Post by: erpbridge on May 17, 2013, 04:33:33 AM So, I ordered a couple 1x-16x riser cables from Cablesaurus for connecting my 7950's an an old motherboard... it has a 16x which I plug the card into fine, and has two PCIe 1x which are the ones I'd need for the 7950s. He sent along a 1x-16x powered, and was out of anymore and sent a 1x-1x unpowered instead. I'm using the 1x-16x just fine.
Can I use the 1x-1x riser (which does have the open end, so I don't need to dremel it open), even through the card is a 16x card? Or am I going to see some issues? BTCe trollbox seems to have different opinions on this, with -some people telling me it will work -Some telling me I need to solder a cable between a pin on the far end of the card and a pin inside the riser (I'm not doing that) -Some telling me I need to dremel cut off the extra pins (sheer lunacy) -some telling me that its just not possible. Want to find out from someone the correct answer, before I go frying a 300 buck 7950. (and please, no "here's a quarter, go buy a clue" answers... tired of that cop out toward people who honestly don't know.) Title: Re: Risers, 1x and 16x Post by: crazyates on May 17, 2013, 06:00:40 AM Here is a summery of your options that you seemed to collect:
#1) Yes it will work. #2) That is a motherboard issue, not a PCIe 1x extender issue. Some MBs need to short 2 of the pins to recognise properly. #3) That's the most stupid thing I've read all day. Do NOT dremel off the pins off of your GPU. #4) They haven't tried it. Many people on these forums used 1x-1x or 1x-16x extenders for their GPUs. Title: Re: Risers, 1x and 16x Post by: malevolent on May 17, 2013, 05:19:04 PM #2 You do not need to solder anything. You can take 5 cm (about two inches if you are from US) of a very thin wire, take of the insulation and put the two ends as shown here:
http://blog.zorinaq.com/images/pcie-short-schematic.png You can put it directly in the PCI-E slot or in the riser. Newer motherboards will often require it to recognize the GPUs in x1 physical slots. #3 A few people did cut their pins to insert a x16 card into a x1 slot, it works but then it becomes pretty much useless outside mining/hashing. Happy mining. P.S. You also don't need a x1-x16 riser, x1-x1 will suffice and it's cheaper, the only inconvenience is that you will have to cut or melt (I used a soldering gun) to get rid of the of a piece of plastic on the riser. |