[SOLVED] 3080 (with Riser) in Thermaltake P3

[Beetonl]

Hey guys, I'm thinking ahead to my 3080 (whenever I get one) with my existing build.

Here is my speccy;

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/dMNxcfs4YZmVcBueVzPfFz2

Basically, my Motherboard (Z490 AORUS ELITE AC) is PCI.4 ready (that said Intel isn't ready and only supports PCI3), and I know that the new gen 30 series Nvidia cards are also PCI.4. However, my case is the Thermaltake P3 (TG), which looks lovely and has the Vertical mount kit which I currently use with its supplied RISER cable. My question is, when I at some point get hold of a 30 series card, will I expect issues with it using the riser. I know PCI.4 is backwards compatible with PCI.3, but I'm not sure if the cable is only PCI3? I cant seem to find a setting in the BIOS to ensure the PCIE slot on the Mobo forces PCI.3, its just auto-detects.

Will I have issues, do I need a a new riser cable or something?

Cheers

 

[Zerk2012]

Hey guys, I'm thinking ahead to my 3080 (whenever I get one) with my existing build.

Here is my speccy;

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/dMNxcfs4YZmVcBueVzPfFz2

Basically, my Motherboard (Z490 AORUS ELITE AC) is PCI.4 ready (that said Intel isn't ready and only supports PCI3), and I know that the new gen 30 series Nvidia cards are also PCI.4. However, my case is the Thermaltake P3 (TG), which looks lovely and has the Vertical mount kit which I currently use with its supplied RISER cable. My question is, when I at some point get hold of a 30 series card, will I expect issues with it using the riser. I know PCI.4 is backwards compatible with PCI.3, but I'm not sure if the cable is only PCI3? I cant seem to find a setting in the BIOS to ensure the PCIE slot on the Mobo forces PCI.3, its just auto-detects.

Will I have issues, do I need a a new riser cable or something?

Cheers

It will run the same @ 3.0

 

[Beetonl]

It will run the same @ 3.0

Thanks, but do I need to upgrade my riser cable to be 'PCIe4', the odd part in this setup will be that;
CPU - PCI3 only support
Mobo - PCI4 supported (but will determine the gen automatically)
Riser - built pre-PCI4
GPU- PCI4

Will I need to do tinkering, or should it in theory work out the box?

 

[Zerk2012]

Thanks, but do I need to upgrade my riser cable to be 'PCIe4', the odd part in this setup will be that;
CPU - PCI3 only support
Mobo - PCI4 supported (but will determine the gen automatically)
Riser - built pre-PCI4
GPU- PCI4

Will I need to do tinkering, or should it in theory work out the box?

Nothing to do but plug it in.

 

[cryoburner]

The PCIe slot will be running as a 3.0 slot, so I don't see any reason why the riser wouldn't work as well as it would on any other 3.0 slot.

And even 4.0 might potentially work over the riser (with a compatible CPU), since PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 use the same electrical connections, and a riser is essentially just an "extension cord" used to relocate a slot to another location.

That being said, risers can sometime cause incompatibilities, and I expect that could potentially be even more of an issue when a 4.0 signal is being used. PCIe 4.0 can transfer data at up to double the rate, and as such, it's more likely to run into issues when the length of the electrical connections is increased. Of course, that would probably only be relevant if you upgraded your CPU at some point, and ultimately it shouldn't make much of a difference to performance even with an RTX 3080.

As a side note, have you verified that your RAM is running at its rated speed? It looks like it may only be running at DDR4-2133 there (1067MHz) while it should be able to run at DDR4-3200 (1600MHz). You should boot into your bios and ensure that the DDR4-3200 XMP profile is enabled to get optimal performance out of your processor.

 

[Beetonl]

The PCIe slot will be running as a 3.0 slot, so I don't see any reason why the riser wouldn't work as well as it would on any other 3.0 slot.

And even 4.0 might potentially work over the riser (with a compatible CPU), since PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 use the same electrical connections, and a riser is essentially just an "extension cord" used to relocate a slot to another location.

That being said, risers can sometime cause incompatibilities, and I expect that could potentially be even more of an issue when a 4.0 signal is being used. PCIe 4.0 can transfer data at up to double the rate, and as such, it's more likely to run into issues when the length of the electrical connections is increased. Of course, that would probably only be relevant if you upgraded your CPU at some point, and ultimately it shouldn't make much of a difference to performance even with an RTX 3080.

As a side note, have you verified that your RAM is running at its rated speed? It looks like it may only be running at DDR4-2133 there (1067MHz) while it should be able to run at DDR4-3200 (1600MHz). You should boot into your bios and ensure that the DDR4-3200 XMP profile is enabled to get optimal performance out of your processor.

Thanks @cryoburner, the confusion on my end is that the slot and board Z490 are marketed as PCI4 ready and just sits on an 'auto mode' in BIOS (maybe that's just their way of marketing it and a BIOS update will be available when intel actually release Gen4 processors). The scare I had was that I was reading forums of people suggesting they needed to force the lane as PCI3 in the BIOS to get their GPU working with the riser, but maybe that was for users with AMD CPUs that supports PCI4 as well?

Regarding the RAM speeds, you are right I didnt have my XMP profile enabled (which I have done now (Y) )

Thanks

 

[cryoburner]

The scare I had was that I was reading forums of people suggesting they needed to force the lane as PCI3 in the BIOS to get their GPU working with the riser, but maybe that was for users with AMD CPUs that supports PCI4 as well?

That seems probable, since Intel doesn't currently have any desktop processors for sale that would operate in PCIe 4.0 mode. And once they do, it might be the same situation where the riser might not work if it increases the distance of the connection between the card and the CPU too much. As it is, motherboards that support PCIe 4.0 on slots beyond the top one typically require additional hardware on the board to ensure a proper signal to those more distant slots.