Discussion A 3070, an Asus X570-I, and a Gen-3 riser cable walk into a bar...

Wolfe1

Trash Compacter
Original poster
Dec 12, 2019
41
58
So I somehow was able to get a 3070 FE at MSRP yesterday in the best buy drop*** and its going into my SM550.

One thing that I remember hearing awhile back were issues with PCIe-4.0 cards and 3.0 riser cables (specifically with 4.0 mobos). I have done some searching and it seems that in some cases you will simply have to switch the PCIe compatibility to 3.0 which is no issue. My concern is that some reports have been that you will not even be able to post to the bios via a PCIe-3.0 riser cable if you have a 4.0 card and a 4.0 mobo and its set to auto or defaulted 4.0 compatibility.

So my question is there anyone out there in this community that can tell me what the current situation is with this combo (Asus X570-I w/ latest-ish bios, 3070, and a 3.0 riser cable)? If I have to reset my bios will I have to tear my build apart to connect the GPU directly?

Thanks everyone!


***Small plug for Brobot 8080 if you are looking for a card, fastest alerts I have used by far.
 
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BRSxIgnition

Master of Cramming
Mar 15, 2020
381
544
There are the following solutions to this problem:
  1. Build outside the case with the GPU installed directly to the Motherboard. Check that everything works & posts, then go into BIOS and change it to 3.0.
  2. Alternatively, if you have an old PCIE 3.0 GPU lying around, build with that, post, swap the BIOS to 3.0, then install your 3070.
  3. Regardless of which option you use above, you will need to repeat the above whenever you update your bios if it resets the PCIE setting upon updating it.
I hope this helps - I don't know about these specific parts or if they avoid the issues at the root of the problem but if it's like the majority of 4.0 GPUs and Motherboards, then the above should work.
 

Wolfe1

Trash Compacter
Original poster
Dec 12, 2019
41
58
When I need to update BIOS I uninstall the GPU driver using DDU (also disable drivers installation from Windows Update), flash BIOS, then I enter BIOS settings and switch to Gen 3. This method works every time and costs nothing.
Why would windows drivers matter in terms of getting to the bios to flip the compatibility mode?
 
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Wolfe1

Trash Compacter
Original poster
Dec 12, 2019
41
58
So I was able to boot and get into windows but the drivers had a glitch. Uninstalled them with display driver uninstaller and then did a fresh install.

The weird thing that ended up happening though was that no matter how many times I would install the driver, it would never stick. Manual driver install would say success and restart just to come back to no driver. GeForce experience would install and then immediately say I could install the same driver.

The solution was to go into the bios and switch it over to gen 3 and the problems disappeared. Not sure how that would prevent a driver installation but just wanted to post my experience for anyone in the future. Even with this trouble I never had to pop in my old card to get things settled.
 
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dhirengsi

Case Bender
New User
Jun 28, 2023
2
0
Hi all,

I have the same scenario, 3070 founders and x570i, using a PCIe-Gen3 cable, managed to set bios to Gen 3 and also did a fresh install of windows and nvidia drives. But I have a very strong feeling that the latest nvidia driver is either not installing or installing halfway although it says it it installed successfully. Whenever I try opening Fortnite it gets all the way to the lobby then immediate black screen but the lobby audio plays. When I expand the black screen and make smaller again quickly I can see the lobby in the back but then gets filled with a black screen again, so today I’m gonna take the build part and install the 3070 direct to the motherboard and then give feedback on the fortnite issue.