I can comment on the USB 3.0 riser cables. They are much better than the old ribbon cables, plus allow you so much more creativity with mounting cards.









It even looks like they have pci-e presence shorts built onto the boards, though I haven't had to mess with them or pci-e presence pins on msi z77-gd65 and z77-gd45 mobo builds.  

Thanks for the thread on the latter mobo, btw