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Time to remove all references to powered risers from all guides


MVC

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They don't help.

They make the likelihood of black screens and dead Akitios and bogus GPU RMAs MUCH, MUCH higher.

It has been proven to be a BAD idea yet newbies are still buying them and burning up cards because they read old guides from before this was figured out.

They don't work, are a bad idea, etc. If you want a long card, bend the case.

Look how many pins there are. Think about it.

Bend the case.

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+1

The minute I saw a riser I freaked out and never thought about using one: a little capacitor glued to the side seems very dangerous and the riser leads to impractical builds with everything flat on a table top.

Molex to barrel is dead easy to do, no solder needed if using the screw one. Myself I soldered directly on the PCB.

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As a (ex) riser user I am a bit stuck in the middle. I never had problems and still see the advantage of relocating the GPU like in a ITX case.

But I agree that new users might have a higher risk of failure and will change my guides to recommending a barrel plug instead.

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How come that my eGPU setup becomes unstable when I remove my powered riser then?

Everytime I've tried to run without it, I get random crashes and black screens both in Windows and games.

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How come that my eGPU setup becomes unstable when I remove my powered riser then?

Everytime I've tried to run without it, I get random crashes and black screens both in Windows and games.

A high amount of those riser being sold on ebay, are of such a poor quality that it can effect if it will boot or not, and some might be soldered wrongly or just bad. ( So I've been told )

A simple DC barrel does the trick much cheaper.

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but neither is there a guide with alternatives, many post with many methods, but not a guide.

There are plenty of guides on the forum. One for everything as far as i know. They are a bit scattered on different posts and pages but they are there. What are you looking for ?

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There are plenty of guides on the forum. One for everything as far as i know. They are a bit scattered on different posts and pages but they are there. What are you looking for ?

I have an akito + powered riser + Gtx970 miniITX + 600 silverstone. But is that another secure method I can use to replace the riser

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Hey, if you have it working, great. I apologize if my tone was wrong, I just keep reading stories about failure and trouble and they frequently mention a riser.

Years back I worked on and sold parts for G4 Cubes. The VRM board was in the way to add larger GPUs so there was a VRM relocation kit that was similar to a powered riser, it had a slot and a pcie type connector. We made them at the time from PATA cables that got cut up. I always found that less current was available to the system after installing one of these. So we could put larger GPU in, but system became less stable.

The other reason this issue reminds me of Cubes was at the time the mantra was "Only original Geforce 3 can be flashed for Mac" Nvidia had introduced the Ti200 and Ti500 models, and there were ones that fit in Cubes, but everyone kept repeating the mantra, and prices for the Cube sized GF3 went through the roof while the same size Ti200 andTi500 cards sold for PC type prices. I discovered a way to move a single resistor on those boards and change device id into GF3, then they flashed beautifully.

A little later on, someone else discovered that you could also just change the device id in the rom file. So, a couple of edits in Hexed and you tripled the number of cards that could be flashed for Mac. I was called a liar on the Cube forums when I said it was possible, the Mantra had been repeated so often that nobody thought to question it.

There may very well be powered risers that are well made, use copper wire, good solder connections with gold plated pins, etc. But the "race to the bottom" to get them to be $5 on Ebay doesn't buy those. It buys ones made of aluminum or steel wire with shoddy soldering and brass plated contacts that get corrosion and degrade signals.

There are so many barriers already to making these work on Macs that adding something that increases the false issues is bad, and just adds to the noise. Lots of people come here with hope, reading about a guy who has burned up 2 GPUs and has RMA'd them and happily waiting for 3rd one to plug into his riser is a BAD thing. When half of a circuit is powered and other half isn't, power runs wrong way, many components aren't designed to handle that and go "poof".

Leaving the riser out eliminates it as a source of trouble.

And thus increases your odds of spending time enjoying your eGPU instead of troubleshooting it.

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I agree with MVC for the most part. No doubt that he has 12 AKiTiOs, because he is running a company.

This forum is full of newbies. The same questions are asked again and again. Only a few cares to answer to them. I liked to play Lemmings in the beginning of 90’s, but I don’t want to see people who rush to eBay to look for a powered riser, and…

- they choose randomly one that is the cheapest

- they don’t know what AWG means

- they don’t know how to remove the pin from the connector

- they don’t see how the pin is jointed into molex

post-28870-14495000105191_thumb.jpg

You see the difference? I guess you don’t want the same surprise, so check.

the wires were ridiculously thin too. A rule of thumb - if you try to bend your cables around a finger and it doesn’t stay curved, the inner wires are too thin.

and the list continues…

- they don’t have a multimeter

- they don’t know what is the “back powered” riser

and one RMA again.

I am the guy who implemented AKiTiO eGPU without the riser, likely the first ever with a molex-to-barrel adapter:

http://forum.techinferno.com/implementation-guides-apple/7580-2014-15-macbook-pro-iris-gtx780%4016gbps-tb2-akitio-thunder2-win8-1-%5Bgoalque%5D.html#post103029

There you will find the proper powering methods. A powered riser is still an option, if and only if it’s quality made. Don’t buy any which has ugly chunk of glue covering the solder spots. I have a couple of these, capacitors on the both sides:

post-28870-14495000105562_thumb.jpg

My Sonnet SEL was stable for several months and the riser was not back powered. However, AKiTiO does work with both types, but you have to know which way your eBay riser feeds power. If you are unsure, forget them. Instead learn what is polarity, then buy a multimeter and learn how it works, and finally make a molex-to-barrel adapter. Always double check with a multimeter that you have the correct polarity and correct voltage. Then you are ready to use your eGPU.

Powered risers still have some benefits:

1) Capacitors smoothing the power.

2) You will get distance from the AKiTiO’s electronic parts. System operating temperatures are specified max 35C. The yellow 4-pin cable melts at >80C degree. Reference GTX 980 with a very hot backplate proved it. Put heat resistant plastic between the GPU and the 4-pin cable.

Without @squinks we wouldn’t be at this point. I have played with Thunderbolt eGPUs approximately one year, started with a Sonnet SEL, now I use AKiTiO and Netstor, because I wanted to get rid of the risers. Electrical engineering was not my major subject in the university, but I have MSc in computer science, I know how sprites were rendered at the time of C=64, and nowadays I know some more :)

post-28870-14495000104784_thumb.jpg

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I agreed with no riser method it's safer and easier for many. But what I concern is the yellow/black cable either it will get melt (which mine is still doing fine) of the back of the GPU without backplate will scratch the cable (which show a little on my cable).

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Powered risers still have some benefits:

1) Capacitors smoothing the power.

2) You will get distance from the AKiTiO’s electronic parts. System operating temperatures are specified max 35C. The yellow 4-pin cable melts at >80C degree. Reference GTX 980 with a very hot backplate proved it. Put heat resistant plastic between the GPU and the 4-pin cable.

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