Wednesday, January 18th 2023
Fractal Ridge Case PCIe Riser Has Trouble Running in PCIe Gen 4 Mode, Company Outs Workaround
The Fractal Design Ridge SFF tower-type case won critical praise including from us, for its unique design, well-planned interiors, and room for even triple-slot graphics cards with a little adjustments. The case relies on a PCIe riser cable to maintain its SFF form, since the graphics card has to be oriented vertically. The riser included with the case meets PCI-Express 4.0 standards, but end-users started experiencing problems running their latest-generation PCIe Gen 4 graphics cards with this case, with the problem being localized to the riser cable. Fractal investigated this issue, and confirmed the issue.
Apparently, the PCIe riser included with the Fractal Ridge, while rated for PCIe Gen 4, has a design flaw that affects signal integrity. The riser is found to be only stable with PCIe Gen 3 or lower. The company is recommending a workaround for end-users while it works on a solution: to confine PCIe to Gen 3 mode using the motherboard's UEFI setup program (BIOS setup program), in which you can restrict the x16 PEG slot to Gen 3 mode. "We are developing a solution to enable full PCIe 4.0 compatibility, but until that is ready, we will update our listings to reflect that only PCIe 3.0 compatibility is guaranteed," the company said in a statement.
In this above images from our review of the Fractal Ridge, you'll see that Fractal's PCIe Gen 4 riser is a wacky contraption of two PCBs, and the PCIe signal has to change hands twice before reaching your graphics card. The first, larger, rectangular PCB connects to your motherboard's PCIe slot, and turns it to a 90° angle; while the second shorter PCB slots into this one, and extends the slot to your graphics card, at a 0° angle. A simpler design choice would've been to use flexible PCIe Gen 4-rated cables, and a single point of exchange.
Our GeForce RTX 4090 PCI-Express Scaling article should give you a comprehensive look at how much performance you stand to lose by running an RTX 4090—currently the fastest graphics card—in PCIe Gen 3 mode. You lose about 2% performance at 4K Ultra HD when averaged across 25 games from our test bench, so not by much.
The complete statement by Fractal Design follows.
Apparently, the PCIe riser included with the Fractal Ridge, while rated for PCIe Gen 4, has a design flaw that affects signal integrity. The riser is found to be only stable with PCIe Gen 3 or lower. The company is recommending a workaround for end-users while it works on a solution: to confine PCIe to Gen 3 mode using the motherboard's UEFI setup program (BIOS setup program), in which you can restrict the x16 PEG slot to Gen 3 mode. "We are developing a solution to enable full PCIe 4.0 compatibility, but until that is ready, we will update our listings to reflect that only PCIe 3.0 compatibility is guaranteed," the company said in a statement.
Our GeForce RTX 4090 PCI-Express Scaling article should give you a comprehensive look at how much performance you stand to lose by running an RTX 4090—currently the fastest graphics card—in PCIe Gen 3 mode. You lose about 2% performance at 4K Ultra HD when averaged across 25 games from our test bench, so not by much.
The complete statement by Fractal Design follows.
The PCIe riser card supplied with Ridge has been discovered to be incompatible with some hardware configurations when run in PCIe 4.0 mode.
After extensive testing, we have determined that while most systems will run PCIe 4.0 using the Ridge riser card without issue, those experiencing issues with stability will need to run the system in PCIe 3.0 mode for now. This can be enabled in the motherboard BIOS settings.
We are developing a solution to enable full PCIe 4.0 compatibility, but until that is ready, we will update our listings to reflect that only PCIe 3.0 compatibility is guaranteed.
Currently affected users, please contact our customer service team at ridge.support@fractal-design.com to receive assistance and continuous updates with the latest information until we have a riser replacement available. The customer service team can also help those requiring guidance in switching to PCIe 3.0 mode.
We thank you for your understanding and apologize for any inconvenience.
21 Comments on Fractal Ridge Case PCIe Riser Has Trouble Running in PCIe Gen 4 Mode, Company Outs Workaround
They'll handle this pretty well, IMO
Likely coming out with a V2 riser as an optional purchase, but send one free to anyone who has proof of purchase
It's great to see Fractal acknowledging the issue and planning a fix. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
I suspect that the current retimers are just too costly and are probably aimed at datacenter solutions rather than desktop.
Give them unlimited budget and they will be there quickly.
That do not mean anything. If something is really expensive, it's not "easy". It's not a jewelry or another kind of luxury item.
That do not mean that in the future it will be, but that is not the case right now.
Every additional (inter)connection adds impedance, and un-shielded (and/or improperly laid-out) traces on inexpensive riser cards 'like to' pick up interference from other circuits/devices. In this case, using 'riser cards' and a 'flex riser' was absolutely antithetical towards Gen4 Signal Integrity.
(I wonder how 'cost-effective' a riser using AMMC / W.FL / MHF III micro-coax leads and connectors would be? IIRC I've ran across 'industrial PC' risers built using microwave/RF interconnects)
side note:
I find it highly amusing that as 'serial' buses get faster and more 'lanes' are added, that we're back to the same problems that led the industry *away* from 'parallel' buses:
Signal timing and integrity.
(Also, that 'digital' interfaces are more and more reliant on complex analog/RF-like modulation; QAM, etc.)
Still took them a decade. And will take even more to get there now with more modern tech.
But hey, it's just a matter of cost like you say. They are being cheap and anyone with unlimited money would be there right away.
that just prove my point that if you need unlimited money (or a lot of money) for something, it's not easy.
All of mine have failed except one, they're flexible but also so fragile - if you have to add and remove them from a case more than just the once, they degrade - mine all went from 4.0 stable, to needing 3.0 to be stable, to no display after maybe 5 installations (the whole rebuilding watercooling looops shenanigans)
my only intact one is in an ITX Case where it's mandatory - you cant use the PC without it, so it never got removed to get worn out and the cable length was exactly right since they knew exactly the distance for the required slot
Another common one is my NVME drive on USB 3.2, that often gets stuck at USB 2.0 on front ports, but repeated attempts eventually get the speed up - it's not just a fractal issue