Is USB riser safe?

[sterob]

I see people selling USB riser using the 3 pin- SATA connection to deliver 75W that normally run though molex. I know normal manufacturer have molex-6/8pin PCI-e convertor so molex is safe to use but SATA is for HDD which normally use 3W-5W. Is that safe to run on the long term? will the SATA power delivery enough wattage, or wont overheat/ melt

[InCoinsITrust]

it depends on what psu you are using, good PSu usualy has no problem with it.

[sterob]

what do you mean by good PSU?

[nybbler905]

it depends on what psu you are using, good PSu usualy has no problem with it.

I disagree, the power supply has no issue on wether or not any cable can carry that power ( in watts ).

As Example, there are PCIx risers that carry the 8 DATA lines TO/From graphic cards and the wattage is minimal over those wires.  They DO rely that the ground for the Graphic cards are on the power line and that the graphic card's case connector is also connected to the case's ground to allow the difference of voltage ( the 1 or 0 being sent/recieved ) to be accurate and not suddenly 120V higher than what the system can handle ( over time a DC signal of 1V can appear as a really high difference of voltage when it does not share ground with the receiving system ).

So, I personaly, avoid thoes USB 3.0 cables for actual power, will use them with PCI riser setups after making sure the ground on both the card and the motherboard is shared.  Most of the SATA to GPU adapters do not have the grade of wires to carry enough current for my video cards as the actual wire is too small.  The actuall wire diameter will determine what current it can carry before it starts acting like either a resistor ( and heat up ) or fuse ( and have a break in the connection IN the plastic housing ).  I tend to check to see if it is ' smaller ' ( actually bigger diameter for lower Gage of wire ) than 28 and how many will be power and how many will be ground.

[InCoinsITrust]

it depends on what psu you are using, good PSu usualy has no problem with it.

I disagree, the power supply has no issue on wether or not any cable can carry that power ( in watts ).

As Example, there are PCIx risers that carry the 8 DATA lines TO/From graphic cards and the wattage is minimal over those wires.  They DO rely that the ground for the Graphic cards are on the power line and that the graphic card's case connector is also connected to the case's ground to allow the difference of voltage ( the 1 or 0 being sent/recieved ) to be accurate and not suddenly 120V higher than what the system can handle ( over time a DC signal of 1V can appear as a really high difference of voltage when it does not share ground with the receiving system ).

So, I personaly, avoid thoes USB 3.0 cables for actual power, will use them with PCI riser setups after making sure the ground on both the card and the motherboard is shared.  Most of the SATA to GPU adapters do not have the grade of wires to carry enough current for my video cards as the actual wire is too small.  The actuall wire diameter will determine what current it can carry before it starts acting like either a resistor ( and heat up ) or fuse ( and have a break in the connection IN the plastic housing ).  I tend to check to see if it is ' smaller ' ( actually bigger diameter for lower Gage of wire ) than 28 and how many will be power and how many will be ground.

If there is poor quality psu, there could be unstable power delivery on that riser.

[nybbler905]

yes, a poor power supply can deliver unstable power as well as cheap wires not handling the current and causing shorts, burns, etc.

Spending the money on a power supply tester is a good investment in any case.  I also recommend looking in to wire gauges and what currents they ' normally ' handle so you have an idea how ' fat ' the wires should be for any given power issue.  I've had poor power supplies that could handle 12A on the 12V line that go weird at low currents, and ones that go weird for the 5V line when trying to get more power out of the 12V lines and ways around them all that worked until one of the torroid transformers melted or some other issue.

Been there, done that, burned the T-Shirt and say don't use the cheap SATA power to GPU adapters as SATA doesn't normally supply the current that a GPU needs, let alone what having 2 of them would draw if you have a newer card like ATI 5850HD would draw since it takes 2X GPU power adapters.  I have one, burned 3 power adapters due to cheap leads AT the HDD connetor ends and that is with out mining!

The ' best ' solution for my case was to take a dead power supply, pull off 8 of the 12V leads from in the case ( for the length ) and physically solder them IN the power supply and split them between the 4 connectors of 12V and crimp in to the connectors ( 2-12V per connector as it takes 2 connectors ) and similar for the ground.  The power supply I modded had holes on the board's 12V area that were available and needed some protection against shorting to the case after all that soldering.

This is yet another option on the matter for getting power to the GPU, as for the original topic ' is USB riser safe? ' I still stand by the pcix to pcix16 card addapters that use USB 3.0 cables not being an issue due to the lack of current and you only need 8 data lines to do it.

[sub-80]

I am currently using 3 usb power riser on my asrock h81 pro and they are running fine but am having problems getting the fan speed and the gpu temp.

[nybbler905]

I am currently using 3 usb power riser on my asrock h81 pro and they are running fine but am having problems getting the fan speed and the gpu temp.

OS??
What usb power risers? ( might as well promote to the originator of the thread ones that work )
do you use the included GPU overclocking software?

There are a few threads where the built in motherboard features were hampering the Windows GPU management software and the workarounds turned out to be mostly remove the GPU's overclocker and either use Afterburner ( or equivalent ) instead.  There are a few aftermarket fan monitors/overclockers out there.

[sub-80]

I am currently using 3 usb power riser on my asrock h81 pro and they are running fine but am having problems getting the fan speed and the gpu temp.

OS??
What usb power risers? ( might as well promote to the originator of the thread ones that work )
do you use the included GPU overclocking software?

There are a few threads where the built in motherboard features were hampering the Windows GPU management software and the workarounds turned out to be mostly remove the GPU's overclocker and either use Afterburner ( or equivalent ) instead.  There are a few aftermarket fan monitors/overclockers out there.

OS: win 8.1 pro, Mobo:asrock h81 pro, GPUS: Asus dcu2 280x, xfx 280x black edition and a reference sapphire 7950.
Risers: usb 3.0 power riser. pic below




I have thread asking explaining my problem here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=505666.0;topicseen

[nybbler905]

bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=36061

yet another thread that started with a work around for issues using the X1 for X16 and it may be a resolve to it


EDITED TO ADD

I did add that wire trick to get one of my cards to actually work in the x16 slot or a riser.  The motherboard I've got is using PCIx16 Version 1.0a specs so it's got issues and doesn't like newer cards.

Just watch out for mixing Nvidia and ATI ( AMD ) GPUs as it can be a real pain getting them to play nice in one system.  I did have 2x 8600GT and 1 of 4850HD mining the same coin in XP once I ' forced ' both drivers to use the same OpenCL ( long, involved process where it suddenly just started working after messing in the registry and moving files around ).  Shortly after I got 0 sceens ( power outage messed the boot block and gave up on re-re-re-installing XP just to look at it mine ) and jumped to Ubuntu 12.04

OpenCL was easy to install and follow the ATI directions for installing OpenCL then follow the Nvidia driver install instructions and BAM OpenCL on Nvidia or the ATI, still can't get both to work in the same system and now use AntMiners ( wayyy higher hash rates for SHA256d mining anyways ).