How to mount video card horizontally with riser cable? 3080 aspirations but case too small!

davidm71 · Oct 5, 2020

Hi,

Want to get a 3080 one day to replace two EVGA 1080 FTW cards I have inside my case. The problem is when I modded my Thermaltake Spedo case and installed my radiators and res I barely had room to spare for the 1080s. So the only solution I can think of is to mount the new card horizontally with a riser cable such that somehow got to fasten the cards rear plating onto the back of the case. Think theres room. The only thing is how to handle the weight of the card?

Thanks.

pilotter · Oct 5, 2020

are there gen 4 riser cables on the market?

davidm71 · Oct 5, 2020

I would need gen 4? Thought the cards are backwards compatible?

Anyhow found one by CableMod. Hooks into the pci-e slots. Might do the trick.

Thanks

Slaughtahouse · Oct 5, 2020

Just an FYI - You may have to run at PCIe 3. No effect to the card but just be aware you will have to set it in the BIOS before installing the riser. You likely won't post with your slot set to PCIe 4 speeds. Just saving you the headache now.

Source.

davidm71 · Oct 5, 2020

Slaughtahouse said:
Just an FYI - You may have to run at PCIe 3. No effect to the card but just be aware you will have to set it in the BIOS before installing the riser. You likely won't post with your slot set to PCIe 4 speeds. Just saving you the headache now.

Source.

Good to know. Thanks.

davidm71 · Oct 5, 2020

Wonder if the speed improvements will be shortened considering pci-e 3?

Slaughtahouse · Oct 5, 2020

*To be accurate, about 3% but I wouldn't worry about it

Nvidia RTX 3080: PCIe 4.0 vs 3.0 scaling analysis - KitGuru

By the time you are reading this, RTX 3080 reviews will be live and we will know exactly how fast th

www.kitguru.net

Concluding this article is relatively straightforward. As of right now, performance improvements to be had when using the RTX 3080 on a PCIe 4.0 interface are very small at best, and in many cases are simply non-existent.

Another discussion

PCIe 4.0 vs. PCIe 3.0 GPU Benchmark

With the launch of the new GeForce 30 series, PCI Express 4.0 performance has come up into the discussion. To find out exactly what we're talking about,...

www.techspot.com

In a nutshell, right now PCIe 4.0 does little to improve performance with the RTX 3080. It’s possible that could change with future games, but for now it’s a non-issue.

finalturismo · Oct 5, 2020

Slaughtahouse said:
*To be accurate, about 3% but I wouldn't worry about it

Nvidia RTX 3080: PCIe 4.0 vs 3.0 scaling analysis - KitGuru

By the time you are reading this, RTX 3080 reviews will be live and we will know exactly how fast th

www.kitguru.net

Another discussion

PCIe 4.0 vs. PCIe 3.0 GPU Benchmark

With the launch of the new GeForce 30 series, PCI Express 4.0 performance has come up into the discussion. To find out exactly what we're talking about,...

www.techspot.com

We need someone to pair a RTX 3080 with a pcie 2.0 slot and do some testing.

An X58 based board paired with a OCed i7 920 would do the trick as thats plenty of CPU power to push games at ultra high res where GPU is still the bottle neck and not the CPU.

Because its obvious they arnt hitting the bus limits of PCIE 3.0 yet. Which is weird because i thought i was seeing on paper that the RTX 3080 in many cases would max the pcie 3.0 bus. Than again most of the throughput might be happening on the GPU before it goes back through the pcie slot.

If this is the case we still have a long while to go before we max the 3.0 bus.

The reason i say that is because that means that most of the cards total throughput is happening on the GPU and only a chunk of it is moving though the slot it self to communicate with CPU.

We need 2.0 testing....

Mr. Mojo · Oct 5, 2020

I haven't tried a 3080 on a riser cable, but I have used one with my 5700 XT. My recommendation would be to mount the card directly in the slot until you have everything configured in BIOS if you are using a 4.0 capable motherboard. I skipped this step and regretted it. If you are on a gen 3 mobo, you won't have any problems.

Slaughtahouse · Oct 5, 2020

^ Yes - true point.

OP - I made the assumption you were on an PCIe 4 motherboard but if your sig is up to date, you're on an Intel board. The above is true and you can disregard my comment.

Mr. Mojo · Oct 5, 2020

Slaughtahouse said:
^ Yes - true point.

OP - I made the assumption you were on an PCIe 4 motherboard but if your sig is up to date, you're on an Intel board. The above is true and you can disregard my comment.

Yeah Intel should be good to go. I know Intel has stated that z490 will have gen 4 at some point, but I don't know if it's already active on the mobo and just waiting for a CPU to support it, or if it will require both a new CPU and a BIOS update. Either way, that shouldn't matter to the OP.

ChiTownButcher · Oct 6, 2020

? Would the Riser Cable be different from PCIE 3.0 vs 4.0?

Mr. Mojo · Oct 6, 2020

ChiTownButcher said:
? Would the Riser Cable be different from PCIE 3.0 vs 4.0?

The problem is that gen 4 has harsh requirements as far as cable length and signal integrity. Most current riser cables have issues with it. Mine would occasionally work long enough to get into BIOS and change the slot to gen 3, but it was about 1 out of every 10-15 reboots, and only on HDMI. It was a real PITA in my situation because I had to drain my loop and replace a couple of tubing runs to switch between vertical and horizontal mounting. An air cooled system or a better loop design wouldn't be nearly as problematic.

Edit: If you are running established hardware and you have your settings dialed in (OC and such) in BIOS, there's not really much to it. In my case, I was an early adopter of the x570 platform, so I had to deal with regular BIOS updates. Every update would reset everything - including defaulting back to gen 4 mode, so I'd have to drain the loop, replace the tubing, refill it, go into BIOS and reconfigure everything, drain it again, put the original tubing back, and refill and leak test it again. That gets old fast when you're doing it 1-3 times a month. Another thing that sucked was dialing in an OC, because if it was too unstable, I'd have to reset BIOS and go through that whole process again.

davidm71 · Oct 7, 2020

Hi,

Been researching my options and realized I completely forgot I actually had bought a Cooler Master vertical gpu mount kit a couple years ago. I have it stashed away somewhere. Anyhow a little worried about not having enough signal integrity after reading your comments. The pci-e 4 on 3 black boot issue is a concern too but would hope eventually manufacturers would fix that issue in future firmware updates and not in a rush to buy right now. Also this is not my first vertical mount. Have a Msi Gaming X 1060 vertically mounted in another build and have no issues though bought the highest quality cable I could find. Apologize if my sig is not updated correctly. I have multiple builds as I have been addicted to building machines for a while.

Current build in question:

Gigabyte Z390 Master - 9900K @ 5.0 ghz (Water cooled)
4 x 8gb OCZ high performance ram OC'd to 4.0ghz
Samsung 970 pro 1 TB SSD
Sound Blaster card (Will give up to mod - don't use anyhow)
Evga 1080 FTW2 x 2 SLI (No room to spare against res)
Cooler Master Spedo computer case

Thanks

davidm71 · Oct 7, 2020

Mr. Mojo said:
Edit: If you are running established hardware and you have your settings dialed in (OC and such) in BIOS, there's not really much to it. In my case, I was an early adopter of the x570 platform, so I had to deal with regular BIOS updates. Every update would reset everything - including defaulting back to gen 4 mode, so I'd have to drain the loop, replace the tubing, refill it, go into BIOS and reconfigure everything, drain it again, put the original tubing back, and refill and leak test it again. That gets old fast when you're doing it 1-3 times a month. Another thing that sucked was dialing in an OC, because if it was too unstable, I'd have to reset BIOS and go through that whole process again.

That is a pain in the arse. So you had to drain your loop after every bios update just so you can remove your gpu to fix pci-e 4/3 issue? Couldn't you post from on board cpu graphics? And from there fix the issue? I suppose if you had it on a riser cable you could just plug another gpu in there easily without touching your loop..

Mr. Mojo · Oct 7, 2020

davidm71 said:
That is a pain in the arse. So you had to drain your loop after every bios update just so you can remove your gpu to fix pci-e 4/3 issue? Couldn't you post from on board cpu graphics? And from there fix the issue? I suppose if you had it on a riser cable you could just plug another gpu in there easily without touching your loop..

The 3700x doesn't have iGPU, and I didn't have a spare graphics card laying around at the time. Part of the reason I built this system is because I blew up my "spare" 970 while attempting a ridiculous OC/OV so it was an emergency build situation. I also had a very pretty but very sub-optimal cooling loop, with short runs between my GPU and CPU blocks (parallel flow). The lines were too short to attempt using them in a horizontal mount.

Like I said, none of this would have been a problem for 99.99999% of people. I just happened to be the lucky guy.

Edit: z390 doesn't support gen 4, so you have nothing to worry about. Everything will default to gen 3 and the riser cable will work without issue. It's only when you have both a mobo and a gpu that are gen 4 capable that you may run into issues.

JackCY · Oct 7, 2020

GN, Jayz2cents, etc. are running 3090 SLI on raisers because it's way easier to do than hunt down the correct spaced mobo etc. for it. Raisers are fine as long as you have good ones and there are more than enough of bad ones. You could check these for what raisers they use.

You can always boot the system to UEFI with GPU in the slot, change settings. Then put it into the case with a raiser cable.

Shawnb99 · Oct 7, 2020

Mr. Mojo said:
The 3700x doesn't have iGPU, and I didn't have a spare graphics card laying around at the time. Part of the reason I built this system is because I blew up my "spare" 970 while attempting a ridiculous OC/OV so it was an emergency build situation. I also had a very pretty but very sub-optimal cooling loop, with short runs between my GPU and CPU blocks (parallel flow). The lines were too short to attempt using them in a horizontal mount.

Like I said, none of this would have been a problem for 99.99999% of people. I just happened to be the lucky guy.

Edit: z390 doesn't support gen 4, so you have nothing to worry about. Everything will default to gen 3 and the riser cable will work without issue. It's only when you have both a mobo and a gpu that are gen 4 capable that you may run into issues.

Just need to buy a gen 4 riser cable if you're on gen 4. Well for most seems it has issues with using any riser card

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davidm71 · Oct 8, 2020

Well going to buy the Cooler Master Vertical mount v2. Looks strong enough to hold a 3080 or 3090 card. Just won't be ready to buy a new gpu probably for a while though. Got concerns about the capacitor issue I read about and high prices at the moment.

davidm71 · Apr 27, 2021

So over the weekend got a 3080 from Microcenter. Wasnt my first choice but got the pandemic special which was a MSI Ventus 3080 OC. Card was rather long and took a while to get it there. Problem I had was that the gpu mounted at an angle because the resevor was in the way. If I could only jack up the pci adapter to be a little taller wouldn't have that problem:

How to mount video card horizontally with riser cable? 3080 aspirations but case too small!

davidm71

pilotter

davidm71

Slaughtahouse

davidm71

davidm71

Slaughtahouse

Nvidia RTX 3080: PCIe 4.0 vs 3.0 scaling analysis - KitGuru

PCIe 4.0 vs. PCIe 3.0 GPU Benchmark

finalturismo

Nvidia RTX 3080: PCIe 4.0 vs 3.0 scaling analysis - KitGuru

PCIe 4.0 vs. PCIe 3.0 GPU Benchmark

Mr. Mojo

Slaughtahouse

Mr. Mojo

ChiTownButcher

Mr. Mojo

davidm71

davidm71

Mr. Mojo

JackCY

Shawnb99

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