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Card Edge Connector
Industrial, IT Datacom
Part Number | Lane Configuration | Pin Count | Gold Plating | Key Application |
|---|---|---|---|---|
CUI0987B01140 | 8X | 98 | Au15u'' | Mid-range GPU, RAID controller, NVMe backplane |
CUI1647B01140 | 16X | 164 | Au15u'' | Standard GPU slot, FPGA accelerator, high-bandwidth NIC |
CUI1643B01140 | 16X | 164 | Au30u'' | Industrial / telecom edge computing, 5G infrastructure, mil-aero |
All three variants share the same footprint, mechanical envelope, and SMT process parameters. Pick the right pin count and plating grade for the slot you are building, and the assembly line does not need to change anything else.
Gold on a PCIe contact serves two jobs: preventing oxidation before soldering, and maintaining a low-resistance wipe interface after the card has been inserted a few hundred times. The right choice depends entirely on the expected operating environment.
Au15u'' (Flash Gold) is the workhorse option. It provides reliable solderability, solid corrosion protection in controlled indoor environments, and keeps your BOM cost in check. For data center servers, consumer GPU motherboards, and standard enterprise storage backplanes where the ambient temperature stays within 25–45°C and relative humidity is maintained below 60%, Au15u'' does everything you need.
Au30u'' (Heavy Gold) exists for the edges of the envelope. In outdoor telecom cabinets, factory-floor edge servers, or unpressurized avionics bays, connectors face wider temperature swings, condensation risk, and mechanical vibration. The thicker gold layer means the contact resistance stays stable after 500+ mating cycles, even when the connector is exposed to mild sulfur or chlorine compounds that would degrade a flash-gold surface within two years. If your warranty terms or maintenance interval demand a 7-to-10-year field life without connector replacement, specify Au30u''.
CONSHARE practical note: We see about 65% of volume orders go to Au15u''. The remaining 35% are Au30u'' customers, almost all from telecom, industrial automation, and railway electronics. If you are unsure which grade fits, tell us about your enclosure type and target lifecycle, and we will make a firm recommendation — not a guess.
Every batch from CONSHARE passes a three-stage inspection before it leaves the floor.
Incoming material check: Phosphor bronze strip is tested for tensile strength, elongation, and grain structure. Base material that does not meet C5191 or C5210 equivalent spec is rejected at the dock.
In-process SPC: Stamping force, contact gap, and coplanarity are measured every 2 hours on a 20-piece sample pulled from the running line. The data feeds into a live statistical process control chart. If any parameter drifts beyond 1.33 Cpk, the line pauses and the shift engineer recalibrates the tooling.
Final outgoing audit: Each production lot gets a 125-piece sample drawn per ANSI/ASQ Z1.4 Level II. We check insertion force, withdrawal force, contact resistance (four-wire Kelvin method), dielectric withstanding voltage (300VAC for 60 seconds), and insulation resistance (500VDC, >1000MΩ minimum). A lot ships only when every parameter passes.
We also run random reflow simulation on one reel per lot — 3 cycles at peak 260°C — to confirm that gold does not dewet and housing does not warp. This is not required by most customer drawings. We do it because a connector that looks good at incoming but fails after your oven is not a connector we want our name on.
Standard lead time for these SMT connectors is 3 to 4 weeks from order confirmation. For repeat customers with a 6-month rolling forecast on file, we hold safety stock at our Shenzhen warehouse and can ship most quantities within 7 working days. Urgent partial shipments are available — ask your account manager.
Beyond the standard part numbers listed above, CONSHARE offers:
Custom gold plating thickness (e.g., Au5u'' for cost-sensitive consumer electronics, or selective gold with tin tail for mixed-technology boards)
Reel quantity customization (standard reels, mini-reels for prototyping, cut-tape for small-batch assembly)
Kapton tape / high-temperature carrier tape for extended reflow profiles
Customer-specific part number laser marking on the connector housing
Pre-tinned leads upon request
Minimum order quantity for custom variants is 5,000 pcs. Engineering samples ship within 10 working days of drawing approval.
These PCIe 4.0 SMT connectors are designed for motherboard and add-in-card slots where the connector sits perpendicular to the PCB without any mechanical anchoring slot in the connector body — the retention force comes entirely from the solder joints and the card-edge friction. This "non-slotted side" design eliminates a potential ground-loop path and simplifies the board cutout geometry.
Common integration examples:
AI inference server motherboards: 16X 164-pin slots for GPU risers and FPGA accelerator cards, where 16 GT/s per lane is non-negotiable and signal skew across the connector must stay under 10 ps.
Storage backplanes: 8X 98-pin slots for NVMe U.2/U.3 backplanes in 2U and 4U chassis, where PCB real estate is tight and the connector width must not block adjacent airflow channels.
Embedded single-board computers: Both 8X and 16X configurations appear in COM Express carrier boards and industrial SBCs, where long lifecycle availability (5+ years) outweighs unit cost.
Test and measurement equipment: 16X slots in PCIe expansion chassis for data acquisition cards; Au30u'' preferred for field-deployed test systems.
These connectors are designed for standard lead-free reflow with SAC305 or SN100C solder paste. Key considerations for your SMT process:
Stencil design: Use a 0.12–0.15mm stencil thickness. The 0.50mm pitch SMT leads benefit from a 1:1 aperture ratio with rounded corners to reduce solder balling.
Placement accuracy: The connector body has visual fiducial alignment marks on the top surface. We recommend adding two local fiducials on your PCB within 15mm of the connector footprint for camera-assisted placement.
Peak reflow temperature: 245–260°C, time above liquidus 60–90 seconds. The LCP housing material (UL94 V-0 rated) withstands this profile without discoloration or deformation.
Post-reflow inspection: Coplanarity is specified at 0.10mm max across all leads after soldering. A simple shadow-moiré check on the first article confirms the connector seated flat.
Every part number ships in tape-and-reel format on 330mm-diameter reels. Each reel is vacuum-sealed in a moisture-barrier bag with a desiccant pouch and a humidity indicator card. The outer carton is ESD-safe conductive material with shock-absorbing foam inserts.
For tray-packaging requirements — such as when you need to feed connectors into a tray-based pick-and-place magazine instead of a reel feeder — contact our sales team. Tray format is available for all three part numbers at no extra tooling cost.
50 mating cycles minimum for Au15u''; 100 cycles minimum for Au30u''. These are conservative numbers. In lab testing, we have taken Au30u'' parts to 500 cycles without measurable contact resistance shift.
Yes. The mechanical slot geometry is identical. The 16 GT/s rating is the upper limit; the connector works perfectly at 8 GT/s (PCIe 3.0) and 5 GT/s (PCIe 2.0).
Yes. We ship 5–10 pcs per part number for engineering evaluation, no charge. We cover standard international courier freight for sample quantities.
Yes. Both the LCP housing and the solder paste-compatible lead finish are certified halogen-free per IEC 61249-2-21. RoHS and HF compliance marks are on every reel label.
Cut-tape is available for all part numbers. No minimum — we strip exactly the quantity you need from the reel and ship in an ESD-safe carrier.
CONSHARE produces these connectors at our Shenzhen facility, ISO 9001:2015 certified. All tooling, stamping, plating, and assembly are done in-house — we do not outsource any production step to third parties.
