Anyone have experience with the x1-x16 PCI extenders?

[The_JMiner]

I would use the one with the MOLEX so I do not fry my card but was wondering if anyone else had experience with them on windows 7.
Would love to double my current output.

[1713988849]

1713988849

[Sideways]

They work great, if your motherboard doesn't do screwy things like mine. Well, maybe not screwy, just anoying. When it sees cards in certain slots, it turns off others. So I had 3 cards plugged into the x16 slots on the board, and thought, "hey! a extender will get another card in there!" But after some research, i found that the mobo disables that slot when it sees cards in the three i was using. =[
I havn't tried it with all extenders, so all the slots would be detected at x1.. maybe that would leave them all on. Not sure, threw the card in another box.

TL;DR: yeah, they work great.

[The_JMiner]

They work great, if your motherboard doesn't do screwy things like mine. Well, maybe not screwy, just anoying. When it sees cards in certain slots, it turns off others. So I had 3 cards plugged into the x16 slots on the board, and thought, "hey! a extender will get another card in there!" But after some research, i found that the mobo disables that slot when it sees cards in the three i was using. =[
I havn't tried it with all extenders, so all the slots would be detected at x1.. maybe that would leave them all on. Not sure, threw the card in another box.

TL;DR: yeah, they work great.

So the motherboard may shut off the PCI express lanes if it see's something plugged into the PCI x1 lane? Anyone else have this issue. I want to know before I invest some cash into some cables.

[Morebitcoinsplease]

I have 4 rigs 6x5970's and 10x5850's and I use windows 7 on one of the rigs (still converting to Linuxcoin).
I am using (2) x1 - x16 PCI-E extenders on the Windows 7 hosts and have no problem.

I got all my cables from Cablesaurus, and I took the cables without the molex because you only need the molex if your going beyond 4 video cards per motherboard at least in my experience.

I have had no problems the motherboard, is an older Dual Core board that has (2) PCI-x1 and (2) PCI-x16 and they work great its a old gateway from about 3-4 years ago. I placed my 5850's on the x1 - x16 PCI-E extenders and the system has been running for about 3 months now.

[Sideways]

So the motherboard may shut off the PCI express lanes if it see's something plugged into the PCI x1 lane? Anyone else have this issue. I want to know before I invest some cash into some cables.

No, just with the x16 lanes. It's meant to move the speeds around depending on how many cards you have plugged in, as I can tell. It's one of the MSI 890 (? might be wrong on the number..) with 5 x16 slots, and can handle 4x16 cards. It is also spaced to allow 3 cards plugged in with a space inbetween the three of them. If memory serves, with three cards in they are all actually working at x8, and it disables the one x16 slot that isn't covered with a gfx card. With 4 cards plugged in they all run at x4, and it turns the last one off but its covered by a dual slot gfx card anyway. In the manual it has a fancy table with which slots get which speeds depending on whats plugged in. I wish you could force it in bios, then I'd just force all the slots to x1 =]
Not sure why, but with any card plugged into any of the x16 slots, I could not get it to see a card with a x16->x1 extender in the single x1 slot that the mobo does have. With no other cards installed the one on the x1 extender would work. Wierd. Got her stable with three cards in it, I need to get some more extenders to experiment more.

[The_JMiner]

My board has 2 x16 slots and 2 x1 slots thus I wanted to use them for the x1 slots to get more GPUs onto one mobo. (I run windows 7 so I know 4 is my max)

[cicada]

I would use the one with the MOLEX so I do not fry my card but was wondering if anyone else had experience with them on windows 7.
Would love to double my current output.

The extenders don't require any drivers, they're simply moving the existing socket away from the motherboard.  Your cards should work in any OS as if they were directly connected.

[cicada]

I got all my cables from Cablesaurus, and I took the cables without the molex because you only need the molex if your going beyond 4 video cards per motherboard at least in my experience.

The extenders with molex power are, imo, almost necessary if you're going to be using more than 4 cards.

PCIe slots provide up to 75W of power to the card directly.  With 4 cards connected, you're pulling 300W through your motherboard.  Attempt more than that and your board, PSU or ATX connector will likely 'release the magic smoke'.

Depending on the motherboard, 300W may even be too much.  Eg. the manufacturer of a budget board with 2 * 16x slots may assume nobody will ever connect more than two high-power graphics cards, that nothing in a 1x slot could possibly require 75W, and skimp on those traces.

There's no good rule of thumb here, but my suggestion is that anything not connected to a 16x slot should probably use extenders with molex power. 

Then again, the MSI BB Marshal and it's 8 * 16x slots doesn't fit this rule - you probably don't want to be pulling 600W through it, though MSI may have taken this into account when designing the board.  Attempting to connect cards to all 8 sockets, however, will probably melt / burn the 12v wires connecting your PSU to the mobo (ATX24 pin) if they aren't of sufficient gauge to handle the current.