How many PCIe Extensions is TOO MANY??
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,366 words · ~6 min read
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okay so when we were building our wall pewter wall computer well pewter get it
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anyway one of the challenges was having the graphics card on the opposite side
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of the frame versus the motherboard i mean this thing was so far away that
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there wasn't a single pci express riser
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cable on the market that was able to reach
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so the solution use more pci express risers we actually
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ended up with a one meter thermaltake
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premium extender chained to a 30 centimeter one and we
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pulled it off with no performance degradation whatsoever the system worked
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perfectly fine which got us thinking
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just how far can you go
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before things go haywire
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stick around while we uh snake our way
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to the conclusion
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okay so to kick off the experiment we rigged up our standard GPU bench machine
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so it's a known good machine our pci express signal integrity should be about
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as good as it can get then we needed an extra piece so we also hooked up a
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separate power supply for our gtx 650 ti
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graphics card this is so that we don't actually run into power cable length
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limitations if the experiment goes completely off the hook
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also having an excuse to call out to ivan like he's far away is a
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is a bonus so uh hit the power switch chekov
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so i did catch that can you repeat
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hit the i'm right here oh engage in auxiliary
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power now thank you roger don't have ignition
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i'll turn on the system so to kick things off
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we're going to be using a single one meter extension
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plus an additional 30 centimeter extension that's a total of
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130 centimeters this is the same as what
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we did for the wall pewter one more lower there you go
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stress test go so it's running perfectly
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as expected which means
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it's time to kick it up a notch baby let's take it to
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160 centimeters would you look at that still no dropped
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frames let's add more look at this
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it's ridiculous yeah
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down down down right there yep
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no 1.9 meters
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our pci express extensions are almost the height of darth vader
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okay so we're adding another 40 centimeters this time
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you can tell those thermaltake guys have a lot of confidence if they send us this
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much PCIe riser i am excited this was the best pci
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express riser technology we had around here so
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these aren't even shielded these you legitimately can't go very far
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with like i tried uh daisy chaining even two of these together and i had trouble
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with it so oh
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do we have failure okay let's try disconnect and reconnect
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just to make sure that we're being fair to it
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come on baby is the 650 ti PCIe gen 3 yet
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okay so maybe our load just isn't demanding
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enough maybe we need to bring out the big guns
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a titan xp okay so let's shut it down and let's try again so
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look at this okay so do you remember back when they
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launched this thing there was a bunch of press around the missing PCIe pins look check
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this out so these are power and then
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this is all data and NVIDIA swore up and
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down makes no difference makes no difference now we don't know
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if this is because it's gen 3 or if it's because it actually has all the pins but
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what we do know is that our 650 ti
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didn't go as far as our titan xp at the
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same resolution i mean arguably this is a bit of an edge
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case but um one can say the scenario is somewhat of
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a stretch i think we're gonna have to go even
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further straight to three meters
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should we do it yolo
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okay this is ridiculous i mean why would anyone need to no we need more table we
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need more table you have to hold the monitor now this is what happens
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in your relationship how many times do i have to say i'm not yelling at you i'm
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yelling with you okay be honest with me though are we expecting this to work no common
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it's on no artifacts or anything
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this is crazy how's it doing though 120 FPS same as
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before we're still getting the same frame rate
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no weird anomalies three meters
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that's like 10 feet for americans
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add 30 or add 60.
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do i really have to scream yolo okay
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monitor over on the other side and then just hold the graphics card here
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this is insane that's the last piece we have yeah 3.6
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okay no one come through this door
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no it's still working
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no way wait
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maybe that's all we got oh oh it's at postcode 40 now
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same as last time eh same as last time okay hold on let's shut it down no let's
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i'll do a quick reconnect of all the things okay hold on also keep in mind
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that these are not powered so perhaps it's not even signal loss it's just
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power loss oh you could be right
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three two one blast off
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no look at this
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look at this 3.6 meters
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you could literally have your graphics card
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in another room okay hold on i gotta run for mark though
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show me the 120 oh oh oh oh oh
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no
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no the FPS is going up though it's at 55 fp
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86 25 14
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30. no
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oh wait no it's so borderline
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oh it just teases me every time
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welcome to my personal life oh okay well i think we've reached the
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limit ultimately we failed when we tried to
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yolo too hard but i still consider this a success
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three meters of pci express extension
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and we managed to get it running at a an equivalent to having it right in the
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socket 120 FPS
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so thanks to thermaltake for providing all these PCIe risers and thanks to
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the uh slav for holding the graphics card how's that 85 degree GPU right
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there i stay holding my hand against the hot
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