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Card Edge Connector
Industrial, IT Datacom
Here's a scenario most hardware engineers recognize: the PCB is a 1.6 mm stack-up, the PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes are routed to the board edge, and the connector is the last thing placed. That's exactly when a clamp-type body earns its keep — no mounting posts to route around, no through-hole features consuming the back side of the board, and a shrouded contact area that survives handling without a second thought.
The CONSHARE PCIe Gen 4.0 98-pin shrouded open clamp-type connector is built for 16 GT/s board-edge applications on 1.6 mm PCB. It carries a 15µ" gold finish on the contact area as the standard configuration, holds 98 positions in a compact dual-row layout, and is backed by the material and plating choices that decide whether a connector still performs after its thousandth hour in the field.
The most visible difference in this design is what is not there. Traditional edge connectors sink posts or standoffs through the PCB; this one clamps onto the board edge instead. With no pillars on the component side, you keep full access to the area behind the connector — decoupling capacitors, test points, or dense escape routing can sit exactly where layout wants them.
The shrouded "roof" over the contact area is not cosmetic. It guides the mating card into alignment during insertion, which reduces the chance of stubbing a contact on a misaligned card edge. It also protects the exposed beam tips during manual handling, rework, and shipping — the kind of damage that is invisible on the bench but shows up later as an intermittent link.
The body is molded in LCP with 30% glass fiber, rated UL94V-0 and black as standard. For a part that sits through reflow and lives next to hot VRM circuitry, that combination matters: LCP holds its dimensional stability at soldering temperatures and absorbs very little moisture, so the connector keeps its shape and its mating feel board after board.
The pin field is arranged in two rows of 49 (positions A1–A49 and B1–B49) on a 1.0 mm pitch. That density keeps the overall body length near 56 mm, which fits comfortably within standard PCIe card-edge keep-out zones while leaving the routing channels between rows open. For layout engineers, the practical payoff is predictable: a connector footprint that behaves like a well-behaved component rather than a layout obstacle.
Because the terminal is a clamp contact rather than a solder-tail contact, the mechanical connection to the board comes from the clamp body itself. The contact area sits flush against the PCB edge, and the solder joints are made along the board surface — a configuration that suits boards where through-hole real estate is scarce or where back-side components are non-negotiable.
Gold thickness on a connector is one of those specs that gets specified once and then forgotten — until a product starts failing after a year of field use. Here is what the plating stack in this connector is doing, layer by layer:
Plating layer | Specification | What it does in practice |
|---|---|---|
Contact area | 15µ" gold (Au15µ") | Maintains low, stable contact resistance through repeated matings and long storage; resists oxidation on the contact surface |
Underplating | 3µ" nickel, all over | Acts as a barrier against copper migration through the gold, which would otherwise degrade contact performance over time |
Solder area | 80µ" tin, minimum | Provides a robust, void-resistant solder fillet on the clamp joint; thick enough for reliable wetting on standard HASL and OSP boards |
The terminal itself is phosphor bronze at 0.25 mm thickness. Phosphor bronze is the usual choice for clamp-type contacts because it combines good spring properties with resistance to stress relaxation — the contact keeps its normal force on the card edge long after assembly.
CONSHARE offers the full plating range on this body, so the 15µ" version is not the only option. If your application is cost-sensitive or short-lived, a thinner gold (3µ" or 5µ") will typically do the job; if it is a high-reliability program with years of expected service, the 15µ" or 30µ" grades give you headroom. The ordering table at the end of this page shows how the part number encodes the finish.
The datasheet values on this connector tell a straightforward story:
Parameter | Value | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
Contact resistance | 30 mΩ max | Low and bounded resistance per contact pair keeps the voltage drop negligible and the link margin predictable across the whole connector |
Insulation resistance | 1,000 MΩ min | A comfortable floor for insulation integrity between adjacent lanes at 1.0 mm pitch |
Dielectric strength | 500 V DC, 1 min | Confirms the housing and contact spacing can withstand the transient stresses seen in hot-swap and field service scenarios |
Current rating | 1.1 A per pin, min | Ample headroom for PCIe signaling; also covers auxiliary power and sideband pins on the same connector |
For a 16 GT/s link, the connector does not "set" the signal integrity of the system — but it can certainly ruin it. What matters here is consistency: the contact beam geometry is identical at every position, the wipe length is controlled, and the contact force does not degrade with temperature. That uniformity is what keeps impedance and skew variations from one lane to the next small enough to ignore.
Two numbers in the mechanical specification deserve attention, because they map directly to real-world failures:
Extraction force of 0.15 N per contact pair (min). Add that across 98 positions and the card is held in place with real retention. In servers, industrial PCs, and test equipment that sees fan vibration or transportation shock, a loosely held card edge is one of the most common sources of intermittent faults. This connector's aggregate retention is designed to keep that from happening.
50 mating cycles. That is the rated durability — enough for production test, rework, and field service cycles over the life of the equipment. It also means the connector is practical in fixtures and burn-in sockets where boards are plugged and unplugged regularly.
Operating temperature spans −25 °C to +85 °C, which covers standard commercial and most industrial environments. Combined with the low-moisture-absorption LCP housing and the oxidation-resistant gold contact surface, the connector is suited to applications with temperature cycling, humid storage, or long idle periods between matings.
For a board-edge connector, the component itself is only half the equation — consistency across batches and delivery are the other half. CONSHARE's production system is built around that reality:
Incoming material control. Housing resin and phosphor bronze strip are verified against certified material lots before they enter production; plating thickness is measured on incoming plated strip and again on finished parts.
In-process and final testing. Contacts are tested for resistance and mechanical integrity during assembly, and finished connectors go through outgoing quality control before packing. Every shipment carries the inspection records.
Short, predictable lead times. Because the tooling for this body style is in-house, standard configurations ship quickly, and we hold buffer stock on the most common plating/packing combinations.
Customization without a long detour. Plating grade, environmental compliance, color, and packing method are all selectable in the part number — no separate engineering cycle needed for standard variants.
Custom projects are handled the same way: send us the mechanical drawing or the application description, and engineering will confirm fit, contact force, and any special requirements before the first sample is cut.
The most common question we get about this connector is which gold grade to choose. The short answer: match the plating to the expected number of matings and the operating environment.
Environment / duty | Recommended plating | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
Consumer, few matings, dry indoor use | Flash gold or 3µ" | Cost-optimized; contact performance is adequate for a handful of insertions |
Commercial equipment, occasional service | 5µ" – 10µ" | Balance of cost and durability for normal field maintenance |
Servers, industrial, high-reliability | 15µ" (this product) | Stable contact resistance over years of service and repeated matings |
Extreme reliability programs | 30µ" | Maximum headroom; suits military/medical/railway-grade expectations |
Environmental compliance follows the same selectable pattern: RoHS, GP (green product), and halogen-free variants are all available. If your BOM carries a strict environmental declaration, the part number suffix tells your procurement team exactly what they are getting — no separate certificates to chase.
Yes. The connector is a passive component; it is designed to preserve signal quality at 16 GT/s (Gen 4) rates, and it will not limit a Gen 3 link. It is effectively forward- and backward-compatible within the PCIe family, so you can standardize on one part across product generations.
It is designed for 1.6 mm PCB (1.57 mm nominal finished thickness). If your board stack-up differs — 1.0 mm or 2.0 mm, for example — contact CONSHARE; the clamp body can be adapted to other thicknesses.
Yes. Samples with the standard Au15µ" finish are available from stock, and we can provide engineering samples for custom variants once the configuration is confirmed.
Each part number encodes the plating, environmental grade, color, and packing. Incoming inspection records from our final QC are included with the shipment, and plating thickness certificates are available on request.
