I Tested 15 Riser Cables From 5 Companies - Here's How They Performed
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
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Check out riser cables from some of the brands tested in this video
on Amazon: geni.us/irfAAb
on Newegg: bit.ly/2OJBS5F
Raw data gathered for this video:
3DMark Time Spy Scores (* = Extended Riser Cable)
Control (No Riser) #1: 9004, 9018, 8999
CableMod #1: 9007, 9008, 8993
CableMod #2: 8969, 9000, 8989
CableMod #3: 9012, 9007, 9011
Cooler Master #1: 8991, 9013, 9012
*Cooler Master #2: 8996, 8978, 8994
Cooler Master #3: 9005, 8989, 9010
Fractal Design #1: 8981, 9009, 8944
Fractal Design #2: 9001, 9016, 9016
Fractal Design #3: 9010, 9008, 9004
Phanteks #1: 8977, 8991, 9004
Phanteks #2: 9003, 8995, 9005
Phanteks #3: 9000, 8997, 9003
*Thermaltake #1: 8991, 9008, 9015
*Thermaltake #2: 8702, 8595, 8671
*Thermaltake #3: 9011, 8999, 9006
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Hope you enjoyed this one! Definitely a lot of numbers here, but the idea behind the testing is simple. Check out the description for the data you might not have seen in the charts.
To add to the questions about riser cables, how would they handle data, such as from a PCI-e SSD Add-In-Card? I am asking because I have one that I would like to move out of the way, but don't want to sacrifice performance. 1-2% is no big deal, if even perceptible. Thanks. o7
Tldr:
Riser cables do not impact performance when running a stable and locked clock due to the nature of digital communication.
Why do you expect digital communication running a locked clock to affect performance by extending wires?
It is the clock not signal integrity which determines performance. If the signal integrity is good enough for maintaining the communication, the performance should not be affected by improving signal quality.
Personally I think it would make more sense to overclock rather than underclock the GPU as the stability (thereby max OC) would be more sensitive to signal integrity than performance running said constant clock.
That being said.
The only reason for performance to differ from the riser would be if the GPU-CPU bandwidth is the heavily limiting factor and there is error correction on the communication such that a bit or package would need to be resent. If the bus is not anywhere near saturated relative to the core load, it will have almost no impact on performance as the communication is non-chritical.
As you find performance may degrade by 0.1% and as you rightly state this is not statistically significant based on your data. So I don't think your conclusion is clear, but it should be:
Riser cables do not impact performance when running stock/under clocking.
I just bought a new case that has a "chimney" air flow and need a riser cable that works with my PCIe gen 4 M.2 drive
Hi Greg! Please can you please answer these questions for me? I am a student from Sweden, just started in a program in IT-security where I am in need of Windows 10 pro and I don't have lot of money. Is SCDKEY legit? Or will Microsoft reclaim the key after some time? Love your videos btw :)
Why did you change the channel name again?
This is a problem that nobody has talked about, thanks.
Linus did
Simpsons did it first. Linus*
@@Lianpe98 Which one is it, I can't find it.
@@RainforceVI I don't remember, it was about 2 years ago
@@RainforceVI I'm not sure which Linus video Julian is referring to specifically, but these are the ones I'm aware of:
Linus = ua-cam.com/video/q5xvwPa3r7M/v-deo.html
JayzTwoCents = ua-cam.com/video/VJEobSyVaPE/v-deo.html
There is more info on other sites if you want to take a slightly deeper dive:
videocardz.com/review/pci-express-riser-extender-test
www.overclock.net/forum/18082-builds-logs-case-mods/1427731-pci-express-extender-cables-benchmarked.html
I have a thermatake TT gaming riser cable that I got from best buy early last year and it has been running like a champ, no issues whatsoever. I did test the cable, vs non riser cable and didn't see any performance difference. I must say that the thermatake cable had pretty good build quality vs a cooler master riser cable I bought off amazon. Good video!
just bought core g3 case and included riser cable was working only 10 minutes and started freezing pc and black screen....totally trash. Using 1080ti gpu.
@@elvewizzy
can't agree.
You can get the same risers like the ones shown in the Video for like 10$ a pop. Same Factory, other brand. One third of the price
@@elvewizzy There are literally no "premium" riser cables. All riser cables are made from old IDE cables which were wrapped in black isolation tape. The Thermaltake cable in the Video was their first attempt in manufacturing them. That's why they're underperforming.
Nowadays there's no performance difference between any shielded riser cable on the market
For those wondering, yes, thermaltake does have newer, different risers. Got one with my core P3 Snow White TG, and it was a single, black, shielded unit. Works fine from my basic usage, but since I never used it for long term things I never seriously tested performance loss. No connectivity issues at least.
Can also attest to the cable that comes with the Dan Case V4, working fine with my RTX 2070 connected to a gigabyte x570 aorus itx board.
i just bought my case and online people said it came with pcie 3.0 riser
You saved my life with the gen4/gen3 toggle.
?
As someone who is about to build in a Lian-Li PC-05SX, this is actually super useful. If the performance in the build is significantly worse than when I test the system on the box, I know to snag one of these! Thanks Greg!
ive never had a problem with their cable either. Ive had the o5sx and now using the o7sxw. the performance was just ass?
holy.. It's the case I am looking for! Can this fit a regular ATX mobo? I mean I only use 1 card.
@@VatchGaming the 05sx can only fit a mini itx case. The one you want for a ATX motherboard is the 07sx
10:28 for those like me who came for the cat
Look at it's little mittens
I love kitties so much lol.
Advertisement is why Cablemod won the poll.
Precisely. Cablemod has done a pretty good job with brand awareness and presenting their products as "premium quality", but they outsource their manufacturing to China like most if not all of the competing brands.
"Talk about how length affects things shortly"...amazing.
Great overview, thanks for sharing! I bought my Riser Cable (Thermaltake TT PXCI-E 3.0 X16) 3 weeks ago and I`m really happy with it! :)
The video everybody needed. Thanks man
I was the only one wating for the kitty paws? I mean, I was ready to write a comment calling out for clickbaits, but at 10:29 i was happy. hahaha
Good to know they don't cause a huge hit when it comes to performance (wonder what their bending limits are)! I am currently modding my Phanteks shift and it came with that riser cable you have, but apparently they have a newer one that is wider, apparently lots of people have had to put their PCI-E to gen 2 to make their games stable. I got the newer version being sent but it does make me wonder why they made it thinner..
The ones I tested from Phanteks were bundled with some of their newer cases (Evolv X, P600S, etc.). Gen 3 was fine in my testing, but Gen 4 was definitely a no-go.
@@GregSalazar interesting, wonder if the people who had issues bent it the wrong way or just had faulty cables. Keep up the great work man, this type of info dump is what I love!
Thanks for this test, it really is helpful! But my main worry has been not really a performance drop, but rather latency when gaming. I can handle a 1% performance drop, but not a 10ms increase in latency. If you do a part 2 on this, that'd be a great thing to maybe look at.
You definetly wont feel a latency of 10ms lmao.
That's like your ping to a gameserver is 5ms higher. No difference.
Using a thermaltake cable with my view 71 rgb case....love the look of the card sitting in the case and not one issue with my 1080TI.
Same case as me! But my riser is an Amazon knockoff. works great so far.
HOW LONG IS CABLE? ON YOUR view 71 rgb case?
Nice. So it looks like if your alternate GPU placement can give significantly better temps, then you may get better performance by using a riser cable
A couple of years ago Linus daisy-chained like 6 riser cables together and the card still worked.
So awesome that you even made a review on riser cables, just wondering if you are to give me details on the corsair riser cable?
PCI Express is a digital communication standard, not analog. It uses differential signalling with rates in the GHz range (per lane), iirc. With that said, even though we're talking digital and differential signalling, degradation, i.e. attenuation will occur. What is more significant is that there is no shielding on those cables.
Now the reason why most will likely expect a statistical performance drop using the extension cables is because they expect the signalling to be analog. This results in the analogy of a single wire and DC voltage and having a resulting voltage drop that increases with the length of wire so that once the cable is so long, you can no longer power your device because the conductor is too resistice.
However, differential signalling is much closer to AC power transmission. Please note that this is only an analogous comparison. Due to the continued switching of polarity, losses over a longer conductor are significantly lessened and you will not have the same voltage drop.
These comparisons are decent for a rudimentary understanding of what is happening here, but the electrical engineering makes things break down rapidly due to the couple orders of magnitude differences between 60/50 Hz AC power and the clock rate of PCI-E. That said, junctions/connections attenuate the signal further, there is error coding built into the specification, and PCI-E 3.0 vs 4.0 is moot.
The reason why it is moot is because even though we're at x16 lane PCI-e 3.0 bandwidths, graphics cards have only a minor performance penalty when using x8 lane slots. Version 4 of the spec has twice the bandwidth of version 3, aka, *four times* the bandwidth of an x8 lane slot. If graphics cards cannot saturate a x16 lane PCI-e 3.0 bus, they cannot saturate a x8 lane PCI-e 4.0 bus and would only have a minor drop in performance for using a x4 lane PCI-e 4.0 bus as it has *the same* bandwidth as the aforementioned x8 lane 3.0 bus.
Pls pls pls do these videos more. I loved your channel cause you focused on the questions that most pc channels never acknowledge but every computer builder has (what kind of desk should I be looking for, can I paint a gpu, will my white components match, do riser cables matter). I really love this videos and I’m kinda missing this content
my medium length Thermaltake knock-off riser had good reviews on Amazon. It linked my 2080 ti to my Taichi x570 3900x with no problems. No 4th gen errors that I know of.
There wont be any 4th gen PCIe errors if it's running in 3.0. The 2080Ti supports only up to 3.0
TYVM for comment - I too have a Taichi x570 3900x but a 2080 Super Ultra (3PCI slot). My case is the Phanteks Evolv-X so I will probably go with the 220mm Phanteks cable. I have to do it because the GPU (thanks to ASRock Mobo design) completely blocks the motherboard VRM cooling fan. Although I'm only getting high 60c Southbridge temps under load, is it worth it?
@@chittypoofs It did bring my SB temp down from high 70Cs to 60C. Mid 59Cs with my case fans at higher rpm. I need to replace my Thermaltake RGB fans with some Noctua. My TT fans get so loud above 30%. When I open the side and put a fan up to my pc, all my temps are about 8C cooler.
mid 50Cs. not 59C...
That's in a room that's 23C
I was assumed a loss performance about 5-7 FPS in game,but after this video,same performance with/without the riser cable. Good informative video :)
Great info as usual 😎
Thank you for making this test. While not diving headlong into the specifications you managed to devise a test that has some real world application and can be repeated by just about anyone who want to make sure their cable is working as it should.
Was about to install one but haven't yet cuz doubts until watching this video. Thanks man
had a buddy changed cases and used a riser cable in his case as it supported vertical gpu. His computer would crash when the over clock was enabled. we scratched our heads for while, till i suggested he removes the riser cable and go back to normal orientation. Fixed the problem. I'm not 100%, but I believe it was the cooler master kit.
Great video, I was afraid of these solutions and you were very clear
Hi Greg, I still have my Asus Sabertooth 990FX 2.0 with my Powercolor R9 280X. mobo is PCIe 2.0 and video card is PCIe 3.0 and they are working fine for 5 years now. Planning to use a PCIe 3.0 riser vertical mount. Will the riser works on my PC?
Unique content (I think), well done Greg, it's also interesting btw
LTT did a video where they daisychained a few riser cables, to see how far the PCIe signal would travel. I believe they got around 10 ft before they ran into trouble.
6:45 I noticed that TT design doesn’t have a 90 degree fitter that your GPU slots into.... how do u mount one of those??
The cable that comes with the thermaltake core p3 comes with almost the same cable, theres a metal bar where you mount the cable. maybe it comes with the cable in the video too.
did u find a gen 4 riser?
The windows 10 pro deal is a snag. Just downloaded and activated it for $12 after your code. idk how they get them so cheap but I wont ask questions. Its OEM so I know I can't transfer after upgrading hardware, but for the price, I dont care. Thanks m8
@Greg Salazar hello man ... did you get any compatible pcie gen 4 kit yet ? would love to see a follow up on this matter
Damn. I wish you had done this like three months ago when I was thinking about vertical mounting my GPU in my new PC. Oh well, I guess I know now.
You should have added at least 1 or 2 cheap aliexpress riser cables, would have been interesting.
I'm using a cheap $10 Chinese one and it's working fine. 1080ti strix elder Scrolls online 4k running the same as no riser cable. When you bend it you have to use a can or a broomstick pole so it doesn't damage the tracers.
Would be interested to know if you tried (or might be willing to try) any of LINKUP's PCIe 4.0 Extreme cables. I saw them on Amazon and they seem to have good specs/reviews.
I just ordered some. $79 ain't cheap but I want to vertically mount and I want my PCIe 4.0 functionality and speeds with my 980Pro M.2.
So yes I'm also interested in testing on these riser cable but I suspect minimal loss like the other riser cables and I don't care about 1-2%, a vertical mount aesthetic is worth the minimal loss.
Thx 4 the video... I've too have always felt that there was probably a 1-5% loss with extenders. One less concern for a new build or mod is nice to have... 👍😎
I liked the previous channel name :( note, not that there's anything wrong with the channel namechange, I like your name as well, I just preferred Science Studio, got too use to it, but anyways, as long as you continue producing quality content, I'm fine :)
Content won't change! You have my word! This change just addresses popular videos like our Craigslist reviews which, admittedly, have little to do with "science."
there is really only 1 rule when it comes to Riser cables, BUY SHIELDED CABLES, if you do that you can go stupid long, look at the video Linus did before he went Full Shill, he linked dozens of cables together and was stretching clear across the workshop and still working.
really interesting video greg thanks for uploading
Now test them all together!
Yaaaa man, thanks again Marco for looking after our man from TekYesSity
LTT did this a short while ago:
ua-cam.com/video/q5xvwPa3r7M/v-deo.html
Great job, good journalism.
Great review. Thank you. I wonder, if you have checked out any hardware that allows to mount 2 or even 3 cards at once on same PCIe port?
Two cards via same PCIe slot? Haven't heard of such a thing. Not even sure it's possible. What you're likely referring to is a bracket that holds two unique riser cables. They connect to separate PCIe slots.
@@GregSalazar Check out on Amazon a product from Supermicro that allows to connect two 8x cards to a single 16x pcie slot. It looks like a PCB with two pcie slots, and one wide pcie connector.
If at all possible, could you do some longer-term testing? While I worked at Micro Center, I had a few customers come back after a week or two with failed riser cables. All good until they just... Stopped working.
Also, as far as I know, it's true only X570 boards have the repeaters for lower slots. Any X470 or B450 boards with repeaters would only have 3.0 repeaters, so they wouldn't be able to do 4.0 anyway
I wish someone would make a pcie 4.0 m.2 to regular slot adaptor for a gpu. I want it so bad for a mini itx build.
Any news on pcie 4.0 riser cables?
The one issue I have with these is that the ribbons cause obstruction to airflow from the case base fans.
If the multi-ribbon version had the ribbons turn 90degrees, to form a kinda fin layout, air could pass through them.
Just a detail that I would address with base case fans providing airflow across the MB to assist nvme ssd cooling above the x16 slot...
Buts that's me wanting to keep my MB environment sub 25degrees.
I have the “premium” Phanteks riser cable, I’m surprised it actually does look/feel much more premium than the Phanteks one you showed. More like the thermaltake one.
How does it perform?
align enough riser cables in a pentagram like Steve Burke did and tell us how the summoning went. be careful or Mr high pitch might invade.
What was the length of the Thermaltake cable that had issues? From my understanding, the shortest of their cables (200mm) is unshielded. I'm wodnering if thats the one you tried.
Another great video mate.
Thanks for watching!
Mine from thermaltake after a few months caused my gpu to completely lock up and ramp fan speeds up to 100% and was giving me a nearly 35% decrease in fps on games, and was providing me with super high gpu usage when moving items across screens or having a video playing on a secondary screen.
Thanks guy!
Is there an existing gen4 riser cable already? TIA
Did you notice any heating issues with the cables i have heard they can melt in extreme cases and damage components .
thanks for the testing of this. as i was thinking of buying one of these for my pc. and pets for Lady Pepsi, hugs to you, your wife, and the new addition. later sir.
Nice video, one thing i would like to know if interference from RBB / aRGB cable going close to the riser.
I'm electrician and i think this kind of signal could interfere with a cheap, not shielded cable.
I have an uncommon fault on my riser. It takes anywhere between a day to a week for he screen to go black, the fans to spin to max whilst the audio still plays on whatever I was watching or playing.
Z390 Aorus
I9900k
Aorus RTX Master 3080
Thermaltake PCIe gen 4.0 riser.
No option to turn off PCIe gen 4 as the board doesn't support it. Oddly works fine plugged directly into MB so I'm guessing its a combo of riser and GFX car as I've tried two other Thermaltake riser cables and they do the same.
I like how he calls us idiots most of the video.
Great video 👍
You're doing gods work
I have a Gen 4 X570 and a 3080 FE. I’m using the InWin riser cable. I enabled GEN 3 prior to disassembling my rig (moving into a new case). I should be good right? Before I wasn’t using the riser. I’m basically building this new rig around my vertical GPU. I hope it works 😬
I think this was a pretty cool test
It's good that you didn't truncate the graph bars skewing the perception of how cables differ in performance. Is it possible to use a riser as a connector to an 'external' GPU between say an ITX portable build- or would an external thunderbolt connected GPU be more practical?
Good morning, what Riser PCI exp. 4.0 do you recommend me, I have the Silverstone RVZ01E Case the same as the RVZ03, with X570 I AORUS PRO WIFI mini ITX motherboard
You should test if stutters and glitches in games exist because of the riser or not.
can the cooler master vertical gpu mounting kit support a graphic card which occupies more than two pcie slots at the back of the case?????????
Use The Riser Cable Can Make heat or not? i want to know riser cable can damage my GPU or my Main-board?
so i have a gen 4 board gigabyte b550 gaming x but i have a gen 3 m.2 nvme ssd and i want to place my rtx 3060 vertical do i just get a gen 3 riser cable ? im assuming that my pci express slot is set to gen 4 in the bios as the m.2 nvme ssd slot is backwards compatible. ill have to have a look in my bios to see if gen 4 active not bothered about enabling gen 3 as i have gen 3 ssd
a lot of people have no other choice because they own cases that only work with risers! so its not just about the looks. than threre is also the issue with several new AM4 motherboards not showing the bios-option to switch back to the older PCIe-standard and for the boards that do have this option it will result in an incompatability issue with new gen4 drives and future video cards. the industry must come up with a solution!
You mentioned in the video that you would link to the different cables, but then you only provided links to generic "riser cable" searches. Could you at least provide the model numbers of these cables that you tested?
I'm most interested in the Thermaltake ones that worked with pcie 4.0. Thanks for trying them out with that setting!
Cats are the new tiny plants for techtubers
Thanks! Answered everything I needed!
Thanks for the intresting review but i wonder about the latency when using riser cables.
Is it possible to test it?
i doubt it, we're dealing with very fast electrical signals here and while there would technically be added latency due to the laws of physics, it would be in the picoseconds aka one-trillionth of a second, so no real-world effects. what does become challenging with these riser cables is signal integrity. making sure that the high-speed signal traveling through the traces on the motherboard and down the riser cable don't suffer anything like reflections and eventually crosstalk. but it seems the designs are fairly well-proven.
that GPU is a beefy boii
Interesting cable test. I would also like to have seen products from lesser known companies such as AsiaHorse, LINKUP, or EZDIY. Thanks.
I have two EZDIY risers, they're fine.
no riser cable power level over 9000
I get 25000 gpu score with the phanteks riser cable and without it 35000 gpu score on firestrike... whats going on?
I'm curious about the riser sold with a stand you can use in any case with your display cable ran through the horizontal opening? I cant remember the company but it allows you to set up your card further from the glass since its not relying on your vertical slot in your case.
What about the riser cables you can buy on eBay or Ali Express?
is it possible to use the longer cables to connect 2x 3090 outside the case with an additional psu?
Can you do one for 4090 with 4.0 cables?
Man its too bad you didn't try the EVGA Raiser cable as I have found it to be by far the best one I've ever use
But was the study adequately powered to detect significant differences between riser cables? Just messing, great video!
So interesting, I just used the Phantek but i've had to fold it over itself multiple times so I'll keep an eye on performance. Dirt cheap though so I wouldnt mind replacing it at some point.
Are you confident that the 5700xt was enough to reach the max bandwidth of pci-e x16 Gen 3?
I'd expect performance drop offs from longer traces at highest levels of bandwidth utilization.
I have problem with lagging mouse, keyboard and usb-drives failure. I reinstalled windows and it worked fine during driver instalation, until I installed GPU driver (which is GTX1060 thru cheap riser cable) and I got my problems back! Defo should replace my riser. But first I’ll try to enable pcie gen3 on my asrock z270itx
I know that it probably does not make any difference - you even just said it didn't...
Yet! Could you make a video on PCIE-4 vs PCIE-3.
The NAVI cards are gen 4, and many think you will see a degradation in performance by using gen-3. And many think there won't be any difference at all...
Would be great if we could a video on it... I am honestly a little baffled that I have not seen any channel making this test yet...
Could you give me the direct link tip your cable mods #3 cable please? The Amazon link just takes me to a plethora of riser cables. Thanks
Clicked because of the cute little paws
Same 😂
it’s 2022. just ordered a radeon 6700 xt GPU. as well as a thermal take case included with its riser cables. think it will work?
thank you for the video! can you recommend a good gen4 pcie riser cable? planning to mount 3x3090 in a gpu workstation
@Heart I planning to mount a pcie gen4 quad nvme card,, so don't want to roll back to pcie 3. Corsair only has 3.
So why would you not want to use a riser cable if you have pcie 4.0 slots and gen 4 m.2 drives?
Hi Greg. Does the PCIe 4.0 incompatibility problem only effect video cards that are PCIe 4.0 (ie RX 5700/5700XT) and not PCIe 3.0 video cards (eg RTX 2060, GTX 1060 etc)? I have seen other UA-camrs using a vertical GPU mount with X570 mobos without any issues
I was also wondering the same thing and I think the problem is Navi using PCIe 4.0 with a 3.0 riser on X570. It shouldn't be an issue for PCIe 3.0 cards. It looks like PCIe 4.0 risers are beginning to come to the market though.
I had 2 different cablemod risers on 1080ti/7700k and both of them had this issue where screen starts random flicker or blackout for a half second, almost not noticeable at the beginning but after while it starts more and more and more so I ditched cablemod and now Im using TT and after half year everything is still good.
was hoping to see if there were any cables that were worth using for gen 4... damnit Greg
fair enough though, anytime I'm troubleshooting gpu issues the first thing I usually ask about is risers, the second thing I ask about is gen4 PCIe with suggesting they manually force gen 3 in bios. From what I've seen most if not all boards that have gen 4 support also allow you to force lower gen links for compatibility and stability
are these good for mining?
Why would the pciex generation affect the use of a riser cable? Aren't they supposed to be backwards compatible?
The PCIe slot is probably expecting/pushing PCIe 4 while the cable is only rated for 3. It's like trying to push 4k through an HDMI 1.0 cable.