Making a PCIe x16 riser?

[iFreilicht]

I just stumbled upon a new connector series from Molex, the Nano-Pitch connectors, which seem to be similar to the size of HDMI and DP connectors, but with a whopping 42 circuits per connector. Allegedly they are designed for PCIe applications, supporting even the upcoming PCIe 4.0.

So it seems like all you'd need for a good, extremely flexible PCIe x16 riser would be two of those.
Bplus already made risers with HDMI cables for signal transmission, so this should be a pretty straight-forward thing.

Any objections? If not, I might try to do this in my spare time, seems like a pretty nice thing to do.

 

[Phuncz]

Interesting find.

 

[QinX]

42 circuits so for PCIe 16x you need 4 of them or over €160 worth of cables .
Would be cool to try out, but I'm not sure that it is worth it even if you can get it down to 2 cables.

http://mouser.com/ProductDetail/Molex/100436-1000/

Their standard cables have a minimum bend radius of 7.5mm and the connector itself is another 20mm or so.

Connectors are also around €5 a pop.
http://mouser.com/ProductDetail/Molex/171982-0142

It's a cool idea, but this has the same issue a thunderbolt, in order to get the high transfer, low latency speed that PCIe need you need an expensive cable.

 

[iFreilicht]

Oh dear god, I should've taken a look at the pricing first. Welp, dreames crushed, but thanks for taking a look.
I guess if you don't mind running 8x 2 cables are fine, 4x should be about as performant as regular risers still if we consider a perfect performance from these, but one cable is more expensive than either a LiHeat or HDPLEX riser, so it's not really advantageous apart from the numerous ways you can route it.