I'm doing some experiments for a custom build I'm planning. It depends a lot on the graphics card not being plugged directly into the motherboard. I've seen these used before: The Internet seemed to think it would just work, which is did accept not with any overclocks. (6950 with bios mod @ 1Ghz) Chaining a couple of these ribbon cables made the card even more unstable so I'm assuming it's interference. I'm open to solutions, I was hoping to go about 300mm. Twisted ribbon cable might be a solution however I've not been able to find it as a product so I'd have to roll my own (maybe by cannibalising some cat5). Will it work? Is there a better way? Where am I going to go wrong? Thanks!
Like all wires, they are designed to have a maximum length. After that length, despite being digital, you have issues. PCI-E was not designed to have a cable. It assumes the max possible length of wire that could be on a motherboard from the chipset to the GPU. So already, the wire is probably pushing it. It better use the PCI-E the closest to the northbridge chipset, or get a motherboard with one even closer. And forget about longer one.
It'll run okay, it's only in (extreme) benchmarking situations where the extra latency decreases performance. I don't think it would be very noticeable under normal conditions but I could be wrong. Agreed with the above though. The maximum length probably isn't very long due to the way it is designed.
you would still have the problem of crosstalk causing interference at longer lengths. for best results you would need to either twist every pair, or individually wrap each wire with tinfoil.
