Risers, 1x and 16x

[erpbridge]

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.)

[crazyates]

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.

[malevolent]

#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:



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.