Riser question

[torin3]

The question is whether or not you can daisy chain two of them together and still have it work at optimum speed?

Yep.

Though at this point, I think I'm going to buy some on Ebay today or tomorrow and they are likely to arrive before the ones from the Newegg Marketplace.

It has been 22 days since I ordered it. The tracking number ( 9274899991725046873256 ) showed up on the DHL Ecommerce tracking (though not other versions of DHL websites). However after Oct 9th, it stopped working there, and I haven't found anyplace else where it does work.

Chatting with Newegg support, they emailed the vendor, who is claiming that it is in customs and it should only be a few more days.

I'll give it another week and then ask for a refund.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

The question is whether or not you can daisy chain two of them together and still have it work at optimum speed?

As long as the length is okay and the signal doesn't degrade.
The "SFF-8049 Standard" is 18in from IDE device to controller, but I've seen posts saying 36in is the absolute max length...

 

[torin3]

I should hopefully be good. I don't think I'll need more than 18". The ones I've got coming are 30cm which putting 2 of them together would put it at 23.6".

A 30cm and a 15cm would put me at 17.7"

But I'll try a 30cm/30cm combo and see if it has any issues.

However, jumping over to USB 1x risers, I need to figure out why my Z170X-UD5 doesn't want to see a 3rd video card (first one on a 1x USB riser).

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

I should hopefully be good. I don't think I'll need more than 18". The ones I've got coming are 30cm which putting 2 of them together would put it at 23.6".

A 30cm and a 15cm would put me at 17.7"

But I'll try a 30cm/30cm combo and see if it has any issues.

However, jumping over to USB 1x risers, I need to figure out why my Z170X-UD5 doesn't want to see a 3rd video card (first one on a 1x USB riser).

Bad cable? maybe bad port on the riser itself... Is that one powered?

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

So, you went and got a Z170X-UD5, how is that thing other than the problems your having with it?
What CPU you using?
Ram?
Kitchen Sink?
HDD/SSD?
Cooler? (ice cubes?)
String for Internet?
PSU/Hamster wheel?

 

[NZKshatriya]

^ lol

 

[torin3]

Ok, well, after almost a month, and the tracking number going dead, I asked for a refund on the risers.

Bought 7 20cm long ones from Ebay. They should arrive tomorrow. I bought them from a US vender and they are being shipped from Ohio. They were supposed to arrive yesterday, but the seller didn't bother to ship them until yesterday.

(Yes, I'm more than a little annoyed about it.)

I should have some results sometime this weekend to report.

 

[Mpegger]

As another stated in this thread, interference could be an issue along with signal loss, but you could actually try to do something about the interference. Those extender ribbon cables are usually just bare copper wire in the plastic ribbon, no shielding at all. But a piece of aluminum foil carefully wrapped aaround it could help with cutting down on external interference, though cross-talk between signal lines would still be an issue. You could go over the top and wire up the cable yourself if you're good with a soldering iron, and use shielded cabling of some sort. CAT5e comes to mind for such a endeavour.

 

[don256us]

My concern was that using two cables for one card would cause excessive loss at the connector itself. Now that you are getting longer cables and using one per card, I think you'll be fine.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

As another stated in this thread, interference could be an issue along with signal loss, but you could actually try to do something about the interference. Those extender ribbon cables are usually just bare copper wire in the plastic ribbon, no shielding at all. But a piece of aluminum foil carefully wrapped aaround it could help with cutting down on external interference, though cross-talk between signal lines would still be an issue. You could go over the top and wire up the cable yourself if you're good with a soldering iron, and use shielded cabling of some sort. CAT5e comes to mind for such a endeavour.

Cat5e would be a good idea! I would actually replace the bulk of the cables with cat5e, but to make life easy, I'd leave 1cm of the old ribbion wires and solder onto them. That way there's no need to guess which cable goes to where on the board itself.

My concern was that using two cables for one card would cause excessive loss at the connector itself. Now that you are getting longer cables and using one per card, I think you'll be fine.

The only real concern is signal loss over cable distance at this point. No more sketchy connectors lol

 

[torin3]

As another stated in this thread, interference could be an issue along with signal loss, but you could actually try to do something about the interference. Those extender ribbon cables are usually just bare copper wire in the plastic ribbon, no shielding at all. But a piece of aluminum foil carefully wrapped aaround it could help with cutting down on external interference, though cross-talk between signal lines would still be an issue. You could go over the top and wire up the cable yourself if you're good with a soldering iron, and use shielded cabling of some sort. CAT5e comes to mind for such a endeavour.

I was planning on doing the aluminum foil shielding if there was a problem. I've considered making my own, but I haven't found the raw parts to do so.

However, I have plenty of access to CAT5E cable, and I'm moderately decent with a soldering iron. And it just clicked when I read this that I've got the parts to make 7 of them arriving soon. Of course the 2 day priority mail thing shipped out on the 28th isn't going to arrive on the 30th apparently. I only showed up in Philadelphia this afternoon.

My concern was that using two cables for one card would cause excessive loss at the connector itself. Now that you are getting longer cables and using one per card, I think you'll be fine.

Actually, these are shorter cables. 20cm instead of 30cm. I've got 1 of 3 cards that these cables can reach.

Cat5e would be a good idea! I would actually replace the bulk of the cables with cat5e, but to make life easy, I'd leave 1cm of the old ribbion wires and solder onto them. That way there's no need to guess which cable goes to where on the board itself.

That is the plan at the moment. Though I'll make them one at a time and verify they work before moving onto the next one.

The only real concern is signal loss over cable distance at this point. No more sketchy connectors lol

Hopefully it will work out. Though I think I'll try it with the ribbon cables first, just to see how well it does it.

 

[torin3]

Well, according to the tracking, my risers have been delivered. I'll be getting out of work in 5-6 hours.

 

[torin3]

Well, I tried with a single riser on one card, and a double riser on another. First boot was just a blue background by the time I got the monitor cable in the right card. The second attempt I did get a normal boot section screen for Zorin, then it went to the blank blue screen again.

Never got it to turn on monitor after that. I even took out the double riser and put the card directly in the board. Still wouldn't turn on the monitor until I put the second card off the riser and directly onto the motherboard as well.

I'll try wrapping one of the risers in foil before I try replacing it with CAT5E cable. Also, I'm a little intimidated by the prospect of soldering it up. There are 164 connectors, that works out to 21 pieces of CAT5E cable

I'm also thinking I have another problem. With an 8X, 16x and 1x connection, I'm seeing these numbers:
P10484 (R0, C140, G100) Core 18, TPF 04:53 / 239789 PPD
P9634 (R0, C32, G35) Core 21, TPF 02:35 / 200070 PPD
P9413 (R29, C9, G79) Core 18, TPF 06:18 / 150851 PPD

Any idea why it would be so slow relative to the nearly 300K PPD each card should be doing?

 

[caddi daddi]

could you be trying to feed four cards with a dual core cpu?

 

[torin3]

could you be trying to feed four cards with a dual core cpu?

3 cards. Quad core with hyperthreading. Socket 1156 / i7 860

http://ark.intel.com/products/41316/Intel-Core-i7-860-Processor-8M-Cache-2_80-GHz

 

[caddi daddi]

have you run 3 970's on that board before, with that os install?

 

[torin3]

Nope, I went from 2 970s directly on the board to 3 970s on risers. Same install of Zorin 9.

 

[caddi daddi]

start with one card on one riser.

 

[Nathan_P]

There is a hit on PPD when using anything less than PCIe Gen 2 x16, different posts over at FF have said anything from 1-10%. That 10484 just quoted above is about 25k off what my 970 is doing

 

[torin3]

Ok, a little weirdness. I've now got one card going a 330K-350K PPD, one about 280K PPD and one about 240K PPD. I guess I was getting a change-over weirdness. I've got the one card still on a 1x riser. I'll wrap a double 16x riser in foil and cover it in plastic wrap and see if it will boot that way when I get a chance.

It will be a lot of work to solder one up.