I recently built a system with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D, GeForce RTX 5090, 64 GB of RAM, and a PCIe 5.0 x16 connection in a HYTE Y70 case. HWiNFO shows PCI Express error counters that slowly increase while I'm gaming. The system appears stable and I haven't noticed crashes, graphical corruption, or performance problems. I replaced the case's original riser with a PCIe 5.0-rated riser, but the counters still increment. Is this likely a signal-quality issue with the riser or something I should be concerned about?
1 Answer
A riser cable can introduce signal-quality problems, even when it’s advertised as PCIe 5.0. The counters may represent corrected errors, which PCIe can recover from without causing visible symptoms. If the system is stable and you aren’t seeing crashes, freezes, corruption, or WHEA errors, it may not indicate a serious problem. You can test by removing the riser and installing the card directly in the motherboard, or temporarily forcing the slot to Gen 4. If the count stops increasing, the riser or the Gen 5 signal path is the likely cause. Otherwise, check the GPU seating, power connections, motherboard BIOS, and driver installation.
I already changed to a PCIe 5.0 riser, but I’ll try running the card directly in the motherboard or forcing Gen 4 to see whether the counters stop increasing.