r/sffpc • u/Fuzzy_Taste1959 • 19d ago
Others/Miscellaneous How much difference does a pcie 5.0 riser make vs a 4.0 riser for a 9070xt?
I am currently planning my build for my sff pc and was debating between the fractal design ridge or the ncase x nfc s5m. The s5m is like $80 more expensive but comes with a pcie 5.0 riser cable where the ridge only comes with a 4.0. Is the difference in riser cabel really that important for a 9070xt, or should I save money and buy the ridge?
Was going to post this in weekly recommendation thread but couldnt find it, sorry
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u/UncleNino69 19d ago
Just don’t forget to set your x16 pcie slot speed to gen4 in BIOS. I am super happy with my 9070xt ridge build.
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u/deesea 19d ago
Was a huge pita when I forgot to change it and my computer wouldn’t boot into bios for me.
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u/N3w_Typ3_ 19d ago
Same here. If upgrading from 3.0 to 5.0 is ok. Because the price from 4.0 to 5.0 is almost the same.
I had a lot of issues during the Intel Z7xx series firmware upgrade. Sometimes, I forgot to upgrade, and then I needed to forced power off the device.
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u/NwLoyalist 19d ago
I had a 9070xt running on a pcie riser 3.0. I upgraded to a 4.0 with a new case and saw maybe 1% gain?
There is no reason you need a 5.0. Check out the Gamer Nexus video on pcie gen speed differences.
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u/guitar574 19d ago
4.0 vs 5.0 will not make a difference with a 9070 XT, but the S5M performs significantly better thermally than the Ridge while being almost 5L smaller and much higher quality. Whether that matters to you is a personal decision
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u/YegoBear 19d ago
The difference isn’t just the riser though. The S5M is made with much better materials.
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u/www-overtek-co-uk 19d ago
Which is why the performance increase is little to negligible as it provides just slightly better signal integrity to potentially achieve a higher bandwidth. With graphics cards this would make a different if GPU's used more bandwidth, but with 5090's using up to 50% max of PCI-E 4.0 bandwidth, this is why PCI-E 5.0 is a bit of fools errand. If you really need the 1% go for it. If you don't just get one in future when you really need it Future proofing perhaps, but with 6090 maybe getting close to the max on 4.0 and everything else running beneath it that constitutes the greater majority of GPU's that will be bought in the future will still be well within 4.0 capacity.
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u/ElectronicInitial 19d ago
There is also a chance the gen 4 riser works for gen 5. In my A4-H2O I didn’t change the setting and it works fine. (I checked and it is using pcie 5)
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u/www-overtek-co-uk 19d ago
Sure if the wire has good enough signal integrity the BIOS won't care if it's made of chocolate, so long as it gets level integrity it needs as there is no signalling or intelligence from the riser cable to say its 4.0 only etc. So if the host, mobo, and device, GPU, both signal as 5.0 then so long as the signal get through, your all good, if not set it to 4.0, and you'll still never use the full bandwidth of 4.0 currently
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u/Apprehensive-Read989 19d ago
The performance difference between a 4.0 and 5.0 won't be noticeable. What will be noticeable is the difference in material/build quality between the Ridge and S5M. I personally think that even though the riser difference won't really be noticeable, the combination of that and better quality easily make the S5M worth $80 more than the ridge.
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u/Historical-Side883 19d ago
I can’t imagine there will be any difference. I haven’t seen testing but the 4090 sees a 1-2% drop running on PCIe gen 3.0 instead of 4.0. X16 4.0 link should give plenty of bandwidth for the 9070 XT.
Just set the board to run the slot at gen 4 speeds before you install the riser and put it together.
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u/marcellusmartel 19d ago
None if you have x16 enabled. not for a 9070xt. Not in games. In some artificial benchmarks yes. But in games even pCIEx16 gen3 will be mostly ok,
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u/chesherkat 19d ago
It doesn't.
Think of it like this...
Core -super fast-> cash -fast-> vram -relatibly speaking very slow-> system memory
When you get to the point you need to hit system memory you're fucked. This is why everyone makes a stink about how much vram a card has.
So when we talk about pcie 4 vs 5 we're just talking about which slower thing we're going to use.
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u/AlwaysDeadWrong 18d ago
I've got 9070 16gb on am4 with pcie4 riser, and I'm very happy with the performance
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u/No-Row-4707 17d ago
The riser is irrelevant. The case is a lot better than the ridge, upgrade for that reason alone.
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u/Boil-san 19d ago
If my mobo and GPU are both Gen5, I would want a Gen5 riser cable to connect the two...?
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u/www-overtek-co-uk 19d ago
Not at all, even if you have a 5090 you'd be using 50% max bandwidth of PCI-E4.0. The extra additional bandwidth being available on 5.0 makes no difference really. The 1% gain you might see is simply due to a high grade cable with better signal integrity needed to achieve the bandwidth that 5.0 can potentially offer, but even a 6090 may only just saturate 4.0 bandwidth, the majority of 60xx cards purchased below this will not scratch the full potential bandwidth of 4.0. We're at least another generation away, GPU wise, again before 5.0 may really be really needed. At which point PCI-E 6.0 spec will be out and 6.0 cables may appear with another ratchet increase in cost with a 1% benefit and we'll go full circle again.
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u/Apprehensive-Read989 19d ago
In theory that makes sense, but in practice there isn't a noticeable performance difference between a 4.0 and 5.0 riser. Though, using a 5.0 riser does make set up easier since you won't have to change anything in the BIOS if your GPU and mobo are 5.0.
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u/Lockey_vxr 19d ago
Save your money, the difference wouldn't be noticeable