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**ATTN Users with Thermaltake Riser Cables**


ThermalMike

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Hello from Russia!

Apparently, I have the same problem. I own Core P3(bought it in official retail store) for a year now. Several days ago I purchased new GPU and wanted it to be mounted verticaly and I took inclosed riser cable. First my PC booted with black screen(all was attached correctly). Second time it booted as normal, however GPU-Z said that GPU was working x16 1.1 instead of 3.0. It was all way long 1.1 on load or not(for those who will say it will become 3.0 on load). I want to mention, that GPU plugged directly to MB is working in PCI-E 3.0 from the start.

So, am I under warranty due to this situation? Is it possible to have the cable changed or it is working in PCI-E 1.1 as intended?

After having read all pages, I want to add that my inclosed riser cable has black clip and "Flyconn" label instead of "Thermaltake"

Unfortunately, it's not even possible to purchase premium TT cable as Russian Thermaltake website does not have it in stock.

Thanks for You help, and sorry for any mistakes I made.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi ThermalMike 

I have a problem with the whole RMA situation and riser cable, I only purchased the Thermaltake because of the video I saw with Linus, however, I had no idea about the different Quality cables and frankly why would you even make a cable without shielding.

HERE is what I sent an RMA request form     RMA Request Number: T130565  

Brief description on the issues you are having  -  
   ------Extreme amounts of RF/EM interference making my tv blackout or scrambles its signal real bad with this cable installed, and I'm not sure if it is part of the cause however since I installed the cable I have burned up 5 video cards / rebooting issues , never even thought anything about the cable having issues causing problems since I saw Linus talking about Thermaltake Riser cables then I noticed after my problems  you sent him  premium cables and not all your cables are of the same quality , however I accidentally came across all the problems people are having when someone asked me if I had one installed from all the issues I was having , I replaced several video cards  and a motherboard and spent hours/days/weeks, trying to test everything wasting my life trying to get my computer to work, minimum, bare minimum I feel you should give me a refund of the price I paid & send me a premium riser cable .....
 
1. Motherboard Make/Model   -----  Maximus XI Formula 
2. GPU Make/Model       -----------    Asus RX-STRIX-590 /Asus  RX 580 STRIX  T8G  / Asus RX580 OC / XFX RX580 / XFX RX  590  / XFX RX 580 GTS
3. Your invoice/receipt   ORDER DATE:             12/20/2017VIEW & PRINT ORDER DETAILS Order Total: $27.41 Order # XXXXXXXX Thermaltake TT Gaming PCI-E x16 3.0 Black Extender Riser Cable 200mm AC-053-CN1OTN-C1Sold and Shipped by NeweggQty: 1

i received email confirming the RMA however first being told i do not have to send the old cable back ( and that being said in this forum and all throughout the whole RMA process, then I was told that you guys will not do a refund or replace with a better cable and that I had to send the old cable in before they send me out a new same cable.

  Do you see where I am starting to have a huge issue?

first off why am I being told that I have to send in my old cable when the RMA process says I do not, I Spent good money on a garbage cable that you will not refund? and then offer to send me another same Quality garbage cable? why would I want another piece of crap cable?  after me spending my personal time trying to diagnose & replace 6 Video cards 2 Motherboards 1 Power supply & RAM diagnosing and me complaining to the Manufactures and waiting for RMA's not being able to play my games for almost a year.

I feel I should post this issue on several Social media about how TT treats an issue like this without a refund or upgrade, even though the cost is not a whole lot the problem is your company has affected a lot of people and wasted time of everyone owning this cable & I am surprised there is not any class action as I have heard from some other people.

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  • 5 months later...
  • 2 months later...

Hi guys!

I just bought a week or so ago a TT non premium riser cable... I didn't even think of searching the internet about an extension cable I mean... Yeah: it burnt the led display of two GPUs. No biggies, the cards work just fine, but all the led got short-circuited.
So I am pretty #### right now and I am definitely not plugging that crap again. Don't get me wrong, I love the view 71 and have no problem with TT in general, but these cables are a fraud...

Do you guys have tried other brand's cables? Or are they all a "maybe it will work, maybe it will burn your GPU" type of bet? I'm having a replacement for the cards, thankfully and I wonder if there is a safer solution than a 50/50 bet...

Thank you,
Ced

PS: @Matono72 A bit of a late response as I'm cruising through this topic, but here's the video in question : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5xvwPa3r7M

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...

For f**** sakes. Been having non-stop 2-3 second crashes on my gpu for 23 months now, replaced tons of parts. Now I found this thread, and I'm pretty #### sure it's the riser cable causing issues. No problems what so ever with thermals, tried multiple reinstalls of windows, and different drivers. Even got a new PSU, thought it could have been voltage sag. 

Running these specs:

Vega 64 MSI

Z97-a mobo

i7 4790k cpu

16gb corsair (4x4gb) Low Profile

Thermal Take core p5, with riser cable

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 5/13/2019 at 4:01 PM, Malloc said:

Hi ThermalMike 

I have a problem with the whole RMA situation and riser cable, I only purchased the Thermaltake because of the video I saw with Linus, however, I had no idea about the different Quality cables and frankly why would you even make a cable without shielding.

HERE is what I sent an RMA request form     RMA Request Number: T130565  

Brief description on the issues you are having  -  
   ------Extreme amounts of RF/EM interference making my tv blackout or scrambles its signal real bad with this cable installed, and I'm not sure if it is part of the cause however since I installed the cable I have burned up 5 video cards / rebooting issues , never even thought anything about the cable having issues causing problems since I saw Linus talking about Thermaltake Riser cables then I noticed after my problems  you sent him  premium cables and not all your cables are of the same quality , however I accidentally came across all the problems people are having when someone asked me if I had one installed from all the issues I was having , I replaced several video cards  and a motherboard and spent hours/days/weeks, trying to test everything wasting my life trying to get my computer to work, minimum, bare minimum I feel you should give me a refund of the price I paid & send me a premium riser cable .....
 
1. Motherboard Make/Model   -----  Maximus XI Formula 
2. GPU Make/Model       -----------    Asus RX-STRIX-590 /Asus  RX 580 STRIX  T8G  / Asus RX580 OC / XFX RX580 / XFX RX  590  / XFX RX 580 GTS
3. Your invoice/receipt   ORDER DATE:             12/20/2017VIEW & PRINT ORDER DETAILS Order Total: $27.41 Order # XXXXXXXX Thermaltake TT Gaming PCI-E x16 3.0 Black Extender Riser Cable 200mm AC-053-CN1OTN-C1Sold and Shipped by NeweggQty: 1

i received email confirming the RMA however first being told i do not have to send the old cable back ( and that being said in this forum and all throughout the whole RMA process, then I was told that you guys will not do a refund or replace with a better cable and that I had to send the old cable in before they send me out a new same cable.

  Do you see where I am starting to have a huge issue?

first off why am I being told that I have to send in my old cable when the RMA process says I do not, I Spent good money on a garbage cable that you will not refund? and then offer to send me another same Quality garbage cable? why would I want another piece of crap cable?  after me spending my personal time trying to diagnose & replace 6 Video cards 2 Motherboards 1 Power supply & RAM diagnosing and me complaining to the Manufactures and waiting for RMA's not being able to play my games for almost a year.

I feel I should post this issue on several Social media about how TT treats an issue like this without a refund or upgrade, even though the cost is not a whole lot the problem is your company has affected a lot of people and wasted time of everyone owning this cable & I am surprised there is not any class action as I have heard from some other people.

Same issue here!
Replaced powersupply once, luckily no more. 2 years of my (then high-end, now old) computer being unusable. Constant screen crashes and other issues. Culprit? Thermaltake core P5 riser cable.

Had this been a fair world, TT would have owed me a shitload for having this computer on the wall aging. But I realize that won't happen. However, a replacement cable should be offered. I've sent them 5+ emails, been forwarded once, then 3 weeks of getting ignored. No responses to emails, NOTHING.

Going out and buying a cable. Shame on you TT! Never buying from this crap brand again. 0 quality control, and -1 customer service.

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Got my P5 in 2015 and instantly had a problem with the riser cable. So fitted laterally without it instead.

Found out that Tt were issuing new cables and they kindly sent me 2 as I was running SLI. These worked perfectly and I had them vertical at last.  

A couple of years ago I went back to lateral with no risers, can't remember why. 

Just completed a deep clean of my water blocks, new tubing and coolant and decided to go vertical again. 

However the PC will not boot with either of the cards on either of the risers. (gpu led permanently on).

 

Are Tt still honouring these cables if I again go back to them for assistance?

Thanks. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I thought I was the only suffering from this problem. I am glad now I know I am not alone.

I purchased the Core P3 chassis here in Australia and the PCIe riser cable enclosed prevents any GPU benchmark from initialising. When I mounted GPU (Gigabyte Radeon RX5700xt) directly onto the motherboard PCIe slot, all problems resolved. 

The chassis also arrived with faded paint straight out of the box. There is even a red arrow sticker pointing at the faded area. I paid full retail price but my suspicion is the retailer shipped me a factory reconditioned or returned unit. 

To uninstall all the component and ship back the 12kg chassis would be time consuming and costly, especially for these minor issues. Not to mention the fact that I will have to buy another case for the interim and swap it with the replacement Core P3 if the retailer does send me one. Never would've imagined so much hassle before purchasing a AUD$250+ case ($178 retail + $73 express shipping). At this point I will just live with the faded paint and leave the GPU on the motherboard.

My first time buying Thermaltake sadly it's been an unpleasant experience. 

IMG_20200420_185732.jpg

Invoice.png

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  • 1 month later...

The 200mm cable I purchased back in January 2020 developed a fault causing the PCIE link speed to drop to 3.0 @ x8 instead of x16.

I filled in an RMA on Thermaltake'site and 3 days later a new cable was sent to me. Amazing service and surprising as no email or letter was sent other than confirmation that the RMA was received. 

The replacement riser cable (same part as faulty one) resolved the PCIE link speed issue. 

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  • 1 month later...
On 4/10/2020 at 8:15 PM, geneticmaterial said:

Got my P5 in 2015 and instantly had a problem with the riser cable. So fitted laterally without it instead.

Found out that Tt were issuing new cables and they kindly sent me 2 as I was running SLI. These worked perfectly and I had them omegle vertical at last.  

A couple of years ago I went back to lateral with no risers, can't remember why. 

Just completed a deep clean of my water blocks, new tubing and coolant and decided to go vertical again. 

However the PC will not boot with either of the cards on either of the risers. (gpu led permanently on).

 

Are Tt still honouring these cables if I again go back to them for assistance?

Thanks. 

I have to send in my old cable when the RMA process says I do not, I Spent good money on a garbage cable that you will not refund? and then offer to send me another same Quality garbage cable? why would I want another piece of crap cable?  after me spending my personal time trying to diagnose & replace 6 Video cards 2 Motherboards 1 Power supply & RAM diagnosing

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 5 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I dont buy Thermaltake anything other than cases now. Too many issues with their stuff. The memory they are selling is a good price but I wont even try it if someone gave it to me thats how I feel about Thermaltake. First riser cable with the case was bad. They sent me another one (thanks) but it was the same type (no thanks). That was working for a little while until it went bad. Too scared to use another one of their cables in case it borks my motherboard or something. I wont try their premium cable as well. If 90% of your products are bad why support you in what might be a properly working product? 

Right now I am using a DeepCool cable and its working out good. Saw alot of reviews from people tyring it after their Thermaltake cable fried on them. Everyone seems happy. 

Thinking about it I dont really want to support Thermaltake at all anymore so I doubt I will buy another of their cases. Seems like everyone one you have to drill holes for the water res if you dont use their pumps. I dont use Thermaltake pumps because I dont like them and dont think they are reliable. I wont get started on their poor quality, big price, lousy fans.  Im going to pop a blood vessell if I think back on my experience with their "premium" fans. 

If you are using those crappy Thermaltake riser cables replace it immediately with anything else. It will be a step up. Cant go any lower from the bitter bottom. 

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  • 1 month later...

I finally got all the hardware to put together my new build. P90, Ryzen 9 5900x, 32gb of viper mem, ROG Strix x-570, gtx 1080 founders, p90 case.  I put it together and loaded windows and it seemed to be fine. I started having problems with drivers for the thermaltake software.  Blue screens. So I uninstalled the software and was going to reboot and attempt to re install it. Now my machine won't boot and the bios beep codes say it's the video card.   One long and 3 shore and then 1 long and 4 short. This card is perfectly fine. Now I have to drain my custom water loop to be able to troubleshoot the video card. If I plug it into the motherboard and it works, that tells me it's the riser cable.  Now I have to drain my entire Waterloop to be able to plug it into the motherboard to see if it will work.  I really wish I would have seen this forum/thread before deciding to use the riser.  Am I going to have to pay for a new one?  As you can see below it's not going to be easy now to troubleshoot this.

20210311_182524.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...

I got a bad riser cable with my P5.

I was told I could RMA it, but it is such a bad design, I asked for a 20$ credit and I would buy the $80 one that is the top of the line.

The crappy one cost 30$ I asked for a 20$ credit. They said no. :(

 

I would have took 15$ - even 10$ - just something as a gesture......still don't understand that one.

 

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  • 3 months later...

I got TT P3 Snow edition TG 3 weeks ago, I use it with ASUS B560 TUF, i5 11400, 32GB, 2x1TB SSD and MSI 2070 Super Trio X. Every 3rd or 4th power up I have black screen, led indicating VGA error on MB and it gets in Windows 10 every time. unfortunately led stays on and is annoying / very bright. When led is on I test 3dmark PCI-E transfer rate and is OK 12,35GB/s, a have 0 problems with games. I wanted to put VGA in slot and not to use riser cable that is the cause of problems during booting process.  I've tested this, if I put PEG or PCIE as first device in BIOS it returns to Auto in BIOS if I get this detection error, so VGA not detected = board thinks VGA is not present and switches back to integrated GPU. If I didn't have integrated GPU I think it would hang at this point. I'm thinking to switch integrated GPU to multi monitor in BIOS just to have it on all the time, but I think bright white LED will still stay on. I looks like when PC is powering bad riser cable doesn't supply voltage or is to "slow" to how would I say this "propagate" all signals voltages until it "fills" capacitors on VGA and then it is ready for "communication" with board. This is the only reason I can think of because when in windows all test/games run without problems and it's 16x 3.0 all the way. So to go back to my possible solution by putting the VGA in slot there is a little problem with it. MSI 2070 super Trio X is a giant card, very long and i use Arctic cooling freezer 280 II so I have collision between these two :(

My only possible solution is to make custom made support for AIO radiator, rotate it for 90 degrees and move it away from VGA. To much work at this point but I would have to do it at the end. When everything is evaluated at this pint TT is to blame. They are selling this product for 4-5 years and still didn't  fix it. If it's not possible to have it with quality riser cable at this price point they should redesign this case make it 5-6 cm wider so VGA in normal position wouldn't interfere with AIO or supply quality cable. I understand that this will change price of it, OK, no problem, change it but just fix it. This "changed" wider case can be P4 model, why not.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

p8 tg owner here.

4 months ago i went trough a nightmare. 7 days of testing all my new components and at the end i told myself "ok..let's try this last thing..." ...so i got rid of the thermaltake risercable and mounted my vga in the old way... all the problems disappeared in literally 1 second.

It's a shame that i paid 300 euros of chassis for an high end rig and all the project was almost thrown away due to a damned crappy riser cable. That's one of the most epic fail in pc hardware history.

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  • 4 months later...

Hi

Can I ask if they cables are now "safe" to use OR would I be turning a 5 minute change to upright GPU into days and weeks of headache?

I want to go vertical on my View 71, I'm on a 2080, so I believe that the 300mm 16x Premium Riser Cable PCI-E 3 (PN AC-045-CN1OTN-C1) is my best bet .... OR should I just stay away from the whole idea?

Cheers

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  • 1 year later...

I recently starting having this issue after 1 1/2 years of use with the cable that came bundled with my Core P3 case. I still run an older system with a 7700k and GTX 1080 8GB.

The issue happened right after rearranging my room, so I didn't suspect the cable for a long time, but removing it fixed my crashes and freezes.

With the riser cable used I get 50-60 PCI errors reported from nvidia-smi every hour. Mounting my gpu directly to the board I get 0 in 3 days.

You can use the following command from an admin powershell window assuming you have fairly recent nvidia drivers installed:

nvidia-smi dmon -s pucvmet -d 1 -o DT

This will show your GPU power usage, utilization, temps, and other info. The last three columns are the most important -- they show pci errors as well as your receive and transmit across the PCI link.

The "pci errs" column is a counter -- it only resets after a full system reboot, or when a reset command is sent via nvidia-smi.

I noticed some people in the thread wrapping their riser cables in aluminum foil to try to block RF interference. I was curious and gave this a try, using 2 whole layers around the cable and then wrapping it in clear non-conductive packing tape for safety. 

Surprisingly it reduced my PCI errors by over 10 fold. I only got 38 in a 24 hour period with the cable compared to more than that in a 1 hour time period previously.

Removing the foil while the system was running save me another 20 more PCI errors within 30 minutes. This is for sure an RF interference issue with these cables and appears to not be the result of failure. It is possible that something in the cable that might help with RF has failed, but I don't think there is anything like that in PCI-E 3.0 cables (no repeaters like the newer 4.0 cables).

Rearranging my room and putting my PC into a higher positioning away from the floor must be causing it to receive more signals, possibly from my AX wifi router or other devices.

WARNING: I do NOT recommend wrapping this cable in foil -- either aluminum or copper. This can cause inductive capacitance, and is much more possible on more modern and powerful hardware because of the jump in amperage being used. There is a high chance of destroying your hardware when you do this, especially if the cable rubs against anything to ground, as the foil could cause shorts. I did this to experiment on a much older system.

Aluminium foil is not as good as a RF blocker that people think. One can buy real copper RF tape online, but I previously talked to thermaltake support and they are mailing me a replacement riser cable. I will retest with that replacement cable when it arrives (which I assume will be the exact same cable since it's replaced under warranty) to determine if it a failure issue, or an overall build issue with these style of cables. If the new cable has the same RF issues, or whatever result I get, I will report my findings to help others.

When I build my new system I will probably end up buying Thermaltakes premium PCI-E 4.0 cable straight 30cm, as it's the only cable that I know will mount to my Core P3 case without modification and is the only cable I can find in stock online (their 20cm cable isn't readily available on amazon for instance).

IMG_20231020_163612.jpg

IMG_20231020_163648.jpg

IMG_20231020_163634.jpg

nvidia-smi.jpg

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My new riser cable arrived yesterday and I installed it. Windows functions normally, and I ran a bunch of 3DMark tests to test for stability/performance of the new replacement cable sent to me directly from Thermaltake under warranty.

I got the following scores in 3dMark scores during my testing. (You can click the links below to see the verified scores on 3dmarks website if you wish). The highest scores are in bold. These results result in a 3 to 2 win for the new riser cable (within the margin of error, performance is identical.) 

3DMark Fire Strike (1080p) Without Riser16,843 
3DMark Fire Strike (1080p) With Riser: 16,924

3DMark Fire Strike Extreme (1440p) Without Riser: 9,715
3DMark Fire Strike Extreme (1440p) With Riser: 9,701

3DMark Fire Strike Ultra (2160p) Without Riser: 5,295
3DMark Fire Strike Ultra (2160p) With Riser: 5,299

3DMark Time Spy (1440p) Without Riser: 6,887
3DMark Time Spy (1440p) With Riser: 6,864

3DMark Time Spy Extreme (2160p) Without Riser: 3,180
3DMark Time Spy Extreme (2160p) With Riser: 3,175

When I ran the tests without the riser cable installed, I had nearly 24 hours of uptime before starting the tests, and I had 0 pci errors reported by nvidia-smi after these tests were ran.

HOWEVER - with the new cable installed, I had 507 pci errors, and my system had only had 37 minutes of total uptime once the same tests were completed!

Errors reported by nvidia-smi are single bit CORRECTABLE errors, meaning that the data needed to be re-transmitted.

Any double bit errors are the type that cause game crashes and instability that can lead to blue screens and random reboots. These kinds of errors may or not show up in the counter, depending on their severity (if the error causes a blue screen or reboot for instance).

These cables clearly have what appear to be signal-to-noise issues (the foil trick on the old cable reduced the errors by 10x, see my previous post), but the new cable isn't causing any direct harm to system or game performance at this time. After a full day I haven't noticed any frame drops, and have had zero game or system crashes.

In 2023, I would not recommend buying the cable new (AC-053-CN1OTN-C1) and using it. Thermaltake sells this pci-e 3.0 riser on their amazon store for $34.99. Their "premium" pci-e 3.0 cable costs $86.11, and their PCI-E 4.0 one is $89.99 at the time of this post, making their premium 3.0 cable incredibly overpriced. Both the newer cables are 10cm longer than the original one as well.

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  • 4 months later...

old thread, but i'd thought i'd add my woes.

i have 2 x thermaltake 3.0 riser cables and i also had many problems with my 3090 and msi x570 board (on a thermaltake p3 openair case).

the first cable that came with the case caused crashes, black screens and was not stable from day one. i ordered another thinking it was just a doa cable (after dumping 2000 gbp on a computer, i thought lets throw more money at the situation).

anyway, the second cable worked ok and ive been using it for a 2 years.... however recently i was looking to optimise my Apex Legends FPS and found out via GPUZ i have been running at PCi x2 speed! tried cleaning all pins with isopropyl alchohol and female sockets with air guns, but still x2 even after forcing the PCI gen 3 on the bios.

have had to dump the vertical riser on the p3 and just sideways mount (3 hours of #### work as i had to drain the water, re-cable, cut more pipes to support new angle, remove riser shelfs etc etc). now the rtx 3090 is in the pci port at x16 4.0 pcie speed.

#### things, i wont use thermal take risers any longer..

 

WhatsApp Image 2024-03-12 at 12.43.18_e6fcb51a.jpg

WhatsApp Image 2024-03-12 at 12.43.44_5fd4574b.jpg

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