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Card Edge Connector
Industrial, IT Datacom
Strip away the marketing, and a PCIe 98-position edge-card socket has one job: take a daughtercard with gold fingers on both sides, hold it flat against the motherboard, and carry 49 high-speed lanes per side without the contact pressure drifting over time. The clamp-style form factor covered here (part family BR098) drops the side mounting ears and alignment posts that you see on larger bracket-mounted slots. What you get instead is a body that's only 7.35 mm tall, 56.00 mm long, and a footprint that hugs the PCB without extra hardware. That smaller envelope is what makes it the right pick when your board is a compact industrial controller, a fanless edge-AI box, or a riser card that needs to fit between two BGA packages where every millimeter counts. CONSHARE ships this version in PANT housing with 30% glass-fiber reinforcement, finished in matte black, and loaded into tubes so pick-and-place can drop them straight onto the SMT line.
A lot of confusion in the connector market comes from people comparing a clamp socket to a vertical socket as if they were alternatives in the same category. They aren't. A clamp socket sits on the PCB, the daughtercard slides in horizontally, and the SMT solder tails lock the body to the board. A vertical socket takes a card that drops straight down, with a through-hole tail that doubles as the alignment feature. Each design assumes a different mechanical reality.
If your daughtercard is a small riser, a Mini-PCIe replacement, or any module where a card-edge finger height of about 7 mm above the board is acceptable, the clamp foot removes three pain points you would otherwise have to engineer around:
Concern With Vertical / Post-Mount Slots | How the Clamp-Foot Resolves It |
|---|---|
Through-hole pin requires plated via, adds drill cost | Pure SMT, no through-hole, simpler stack-up |
Alignment post needs a precise Ø hole on PCB | No post, alignment handled by the SMT pads themselves |
Mounting ear fights for board-edge space in slim chassis | No ear, the whole body lives inside the keep-out zone |
That last point is the one most spec sheets don't explain. When a board is being laid out, mounting ears force you to carve keep-out regions 5 to 8 mm wider than the connector body itself. Drop the ears, and your board outline can return to the actual footprint plus about 1 mm solder mask margin. On a 90 mm × 70 mm IPC board, that recovered area is usually where the second Ethernet PHY or an extra M.2 slot ends up living.
Take the top-view geometry and the mating direction together and several decisions snap into focus.
The 56.00 ± 0.30 mm overall length and 1.00 mm contact pitch are standard for 98-position edge-card sockets in this segment — 49 contacts per side, position A1 through A49 on the top row and B1 through B49 on the bottom row. The contact section itself spans 37.00 mm, with a 14.50 mm reference on the entry side. That 14.50 mm is the area where the card bevel feeds in. The 1.74 ± 0.15 mm dimensional call-out is the lateral center offset between the two contact rows. Hold your tolerance analysis there: any coplanarity drift in the card finger plating pushes straight into that 1.74 mm window, and the connector body gives you just 0.15 mm of that to play with before you risk uneven contact pressure across rows.
The 7.35 mm body height in the side section is the rest position of the daughtercard once mated. The 3.85 ± 0.30 mm engagement depth is how far the card fingers actually slide into the housing before the contact beams compress fully. That number is worth checking against your application: if you design a card that is meant to sit 4.5 mm above the board, you'll have a 0.65 mm air gap plus the SMT standoff, and the SMT pads will be the only thing mechanically restraining the card against shock and vibration. That is fine for a closed chassis, but for any product that ships into a vibration environment, add a secondary mechanical brace.
The recommended edge-card geometry calls for 1.57 ± 0.05 mm card thickness — go thicker and the contact beams over-compress, go thinner and contact resistance spikes. The 20° entry bevel on the card edge is what allows the 49 contacts per side to engage progressively rather than slamming all at once. Skip the bevel on the card and you will find the first 3 to 5 contacts on each row taking all the insertion force. The card finger pad width of 0.70 ± 0.05 mm matches the connector pad width on the PCB. Finger plating should follow the same gold-flash-over-nickel logic as the connector — mismatched plating stacks between the card and the connector are one of the most common causes of accelerated wear in this socket class.
The housing is PANT (polyamide nylon) loaded with 30% glass fiber and rated UL94 V-0. The short version: that combination delivers three properties that matter in industrial electronics.
The glass fiber pushes the heat-deflection temperature well past the lead-free reflow peak, so the body does not warp during SMT. The black colorant is not just cosmetic — it blocks visible light from reaching the contact area, which matters in optical-isolated test fixtures where stray light can confuse photodiode readouts. The V-0 rating means a flame source can be removed and the housing self-extinguishes inside 10 seconds.
The terminals are 0.25 mm brass with a three-layer plating stack: 30 µ" minimum nickel underplate across the entire terminal, gold flash in the contact zone for low-resistance mating, and 80 µ" minimum tin in the solder tail area for reflow compatibility. Gold flash on a PCIe edge-card contact is adequate for Gen3 signaling at this current rating, but it is the nickel layer doing the real long-term work — the nickel barrier blocks copper migration into the gold, which is what kills contact resistance in lower-quality sockets after 12 to 18 months in the field.
The headline numbers translate into system-level behavior in this table.
Parameter | Value | Why It Matters in a Real Build |
|---|---|---|
Contact Resistance | 30 mΩ Max | At 1.1 A per pin, that adds ~33 mV drop per contact; budget this into your PCIe aux power rail |
Insulation Resistance | 1000 MΩ Min | Confirms no current leakage between adjacent contacts on a populated, conformal-coated board |
Dielectric Strength | 500 V DC Min | Passes standard hipot testing for industrial control isolation |
Current Rating | 1.1 A per Pin | Comfortably covers 75 W auxiliary power delivery through PCIe edge fingers |
Insertion Force | 115 N per contact pair Max | Full card insertion lands at roughly 5.6 kN total — design your card retainer accordingly |
Extraction Force | 0.15 N per contact pair Min | Roughly 7.4 N holding force — board-mount restraint absolutely required |
Durability | 50 Cycles | This is an embedded-class connector, not a test-fixture connector. Plan service replacement, not daily mating |
Temperature | -25 °C to +85 °C | Covers IEC 60068 industrial cold and Class B automotive under-hood ambient |
The recommended PCB layout calls for 3.60 mm × 0.70 ± 0.05 mm pads on a 1.00 mm pitch, with the same 0.70 mm width on both the A and B rows. That 3.60 mm pad length is not arbitrary. It is sized to give roughly 1.5 mm of solder fillet length on each side of a 0.25 mm thick terminal. Go shorter and the shear strength drops under vibration; go longer and you start wicking solder up the terminal, which can starve the contact beam of its normal force during card insertion.
The specified ±0.05 mm tolerance on the PCB pad layout matches what a standard PCB shop delivers on ENIG or immersion tin surface finish. If your shop is running OSP only, ask for ±0.03 mm — the OSP coating thickness varies more, and you want the extra margin.
The vertical references on the mating card — 1.50 mm and 1.90 ± 0.06 mm — together with the 4.50 mm / 5.60 mm / 4.20 mm contact zone geometry define how stiff the card needs to be to prevent bowing during insertion. A four-layer FR-4 card at 1.57 mm thickness handles this naturally. If you are running a two-layer card or a flexible PCB, add a stiffener behind the contact zone.
Every production lot at CONSHARE runs through a four-point inspection: incoming PANT material verification against the V-0 and 30% glass-fiber spec, in-process dimensional checks on the 56.00 mm body length and 1.74 mm row offset, post-plating contact resistance sampling at 30 mΩ ceiling, and a final 100% cosmetic scan on the black finish. Cpk data is logged per lot and is available on request for OEM customers running automotive or medical programs.
Standard BR0981X33 series connector stock runs on a 4 to 6 week production lead time for quantities in the 5K to 50K range. CONSHARE maintains buffer stock on the tube-packaged K1 black finish, which is the configuration most industrial customers order. For higher volumes or scheduled releases, a 12-month blanket order agreement typically pulls effective lead time down to 2 to 3 weeks per release.
The standard part (BR0981X33XXXX) covers the matte black PANT+30% GF housing with gold flash contact and tin tail plating. Available variations include:
All-Gold plating across the entire terminal (option D in the order code) for ultra-low contact resistance applications
5 µ" or 15 µ" gold thickness on the contact zone for extended mating cycle requirements
Custom tube orientations for left-to-right or right-to-left pick-and-place travel
Halogen-free or full RoHS compliance variants in the order code (H or G option)
Tube packaging is the default. Each tube holds connectors in the orientation shown in the order code (C option), with end caps and a desiccant packet. Carton packing (E option) is for customers who are pulling from bulk into trays. Both packaging types are ESD-safe tested to ANSI/ESD S541.
Code Position | Options | What It Controls |
|---|---|---|
Position 1: Pin Count | 098 | 98 contacts (49 per side) |
Position 2: Body Style | 1 | Clamp-foot, no-ear, no-post form factor |
Position 3: Plating | A (Flash Gold), B (3 µ" Gold), C (5 µ" Gold), D (10 µ" Gold), E (15 µ" Gold) | Contact zone gold thickness |
Position 4: Solder Tail | 33 | 80 µ" tin over 30 µ" nickel underplate |
Position 5: Environment | R (RoHS), G (Lead-free), H (Halogen-free) | Compliance certification |
Position 6: Packaging | C (Tube), E (Carton Box) | Shipping format |
Position 7: Color | K1 | Matte black PANT housing |
Position 8: Variation | X | Customer-specific or standard tooling |
To order the standard matte-black tube-packaged version with full RoHS: BR0981A33RHK1 or the equivalent configured against your compliance needs.
A: Yes, as long as the mating card is 1.57 ± 0.05 mm thick with a 20° bevel on the entry edge and gold-flash-over-nickel plating on the fingers. Anything else is outside the supported envelope.
A: The rated 50-cycle durability is conservative for embedded installations. In a vibration-controlled chassis, expect service life to push past 100 cycles. In a test fixture that sees daily insertions, plan on replacing at 50 cycles.
A: At 1.1 A per pin and 30 mΩ max contact resistance, the connector is comfortably above the 75 W PCIe aux-power spec. Distribute the load across pins rather than concentrating current on a single contact.
A: This specific clamp-foot variant is no-post by design. For blind-mate or rugged applications, look at the GEN4 series variants in the BR0981 family with post-mount features.
A: Standard lead-free SAC305 reflow profile with peak temperature of 245 ± 5 °C and 60 to 90 seconds above 217 °C. The PANT+30% GF housing is rated for multiple reflow passes, but a single reflow cycle is recommended for best solder joint fatigue life.
A: It is mostly cosmetic, but it does block ambient light from reaching the contact zone. In optical test fixtures and certain sensor boards, this light-blocking property is genuinely useful. The black dye also masks any minor cosmetic variation in the glass-fiber-filled PANT substrate.
