Fractal Design confirms Fractal Ridge Case PCIe Riser has a problem

Late last year, Fractal Design launched its new Ridge series of cases. This is a product with a simple, compact design that saves space while providing good compatibility. The graphics card in the chassis is installed vertically, and the Fractal Design comes with a PCIe adapter card that supports the PCIe 4.0 standard.
Fractal Ridge Case PCIe Riser

According to TechPowerup, the PCIe 4.0 riser card provided by Fractal Design has a design defect that affects signal integrity, and can only operate stably under the PCIe 3.0 or lower standard. At present, Fractal Design provides a solution. Users can limit the PCIe x16 slot to PCIe 3.0 in the motherboard BIOS to temporarily solve this problem. At the same time, Fractal Design is developing new solutions to achieve full compatibility with PCIe 4.0.

The full statement of Fractal Design is as 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.”

According to previous benchmarks, GeForce RTX 4090 will have a 2% performance loss in 4K games compared to PCIe 4.0 in PCIe 3.0.