No, you don’t need the Thermaltake Premium PCI-E Extender to cobble together a great gaming desktop. If you’re going to use one of those transparent chassis units to build a fancy-looking rig, however, it just might be something you’ll find indispensable.
Traditionally, people rely on LED lights, wiring arrangements, and liquid cooling systems to make the erstwhile boring guts of a PC look like the innards of a spaceship. While GPU cards have long been some of the more interesting-looking components of most gaming PCs, they rarely get showcased because of the way they need to be mounted on the motherboard. This cable extension changes that.
The Thermaltake Premium PCI-E Extender is a high-speed cable with one end that plugs into your motherboard’s PCI-E slot while your graphics card slots into the other. That way, you can position your GPU for maximum visibility, so you can show it off as a major part of your setup’s aesthetics. It comes in three cable lengths to accommodate different needs: 300mm, 600mm, and 1000mm.
The cable is highly-routable and foldable, too, so it doesn’t have to dangle visibly on your PC, although you will have to make your own arrangements since it doesn’t come bundled with its own mounting hardware. You’ll also need to figure out how to anchor the GPU to the case itself, since most PC cases don’t exactly come with ways to accommodate these types of setups.
Pricing for the Thermaltake Premium PCI-E Extender starts at $69.99.