Has anyone found a high quality PCI-E x1 extender? I would like to move my Soundblaster Z further away from my GPU for better airflow, but every x1 extender I've found online are cheap ****! Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also the PCI-E x1 slot is my only option since when my SBZ was in the x16 slot it made static noise when gaming probably due to shared bandwidth with my primary slot. Something like this, but higher quality.
I found these which look better, but they don't have any x1 extenders... only x4, x8 and x16. http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/Interconnect/Home/Products/ProductCat/~/Interconnects/3M-Cable-Assemblies/3M-PCI-Express-Cable-Assemblies?N=8705059&rt=r3
After some more looking I found one that's shielded but... it looks like it was made in someones basement with a box of scraps! I'm afraid my PC may burst into flames if I tested that thing! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T9ZQDKI/ref=pd_cp_23_4?ie=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00T9ZQDKI&pd_rd_r=K2EZNAF28WP921FPHSSD&pd_rd_w=e2hul&pd_rd_wg=7PQsP&psc=1&refRID=K2EZNAF28WP921FPHSSD Why is there no premium quality PCIE x1 Risers or Extenders?! It seems like there's a demand for them. Especially for people who want to use their PCIE1x slot behind their GPU.
Guess no one here can find them either or they just don't exist! There goes Whiplashwang again opening a thread with no responses...rogram:
What makes you think it's cheap? They are all going to look like that, apart from the few with black instead of grey shielding. Just grab whatever has the best reviews.
So I thought I'd give the secondary PCIE x16 slot one more chance for my SBZ before I pulled the trigger on one of these dubious cables. After doing so, I still had static when gaming and sometimes channel swapping which was beyond frustrating. I then realized Creative released a new SBZ driver back in June. I installed it and haven't experienced the static or channel swapping yet... fingers crossed! This is a much preferred solution for me than using these cables honestly. Only downside now is my GPU dropped from 16x bandwidth down to 8x bandwidth, but I ran a few benchmarks and didn't see any performance loss at 1080p or 4K which is nice and a little surprising. Anyways, all is good now!
If the driver fixed the issue in the x16 slot wouldn't it be safe to say that it would also be fixed in the x1 slot? At least then you'd get the full speed of your x16 slots or in case you ever want to go SLI.
The static and channel swapping was never an issue on the 1x slot only the 16x slot. I didn't want to use the 1x slot anymore because it is directly under my GPU (blocking one of the fans) which added extra heat, about 5-8 degrees under load! So, until I upgrade my motherboard and CPU (hopefully ZEN next year) I'll be OK with this setup.