Network Card But Nowhere to plug it in

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Barometer

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
155
I bought this Quad Network card but none of my computers have a slot like this and none of the new mainboards I've shopped online seem to have a slot for this either.

Can someone identify this type slot?

QuadNetworkCard.jpg


The PC I want to install this in has THIS slot (they are similar but too small)


QuadNetworkCard_2.jpg
 
Ok, I think I see now.

This MB only has one PCI-EX 16 slot and two PCI-EX x1 slots.

So it won't work on this MB
 
kirbyrj said:
You could always dremel out the back of your x1 slot and then use it at x1 speed instead of x4.
Click to expand...
Or alternatively to cutting open the end of the slot on the mobo, you could notch or cut down the card. Either mod is a little risky I've cut the edge connectors on few cards successfully; but you might might want to pick the cheaper part to mutilate for the cause.

Note: like kirby said you'll be limited to the bandwidth of the x1 slot, for me it meant not quite enough bandwidth (PCIe v2) to saturate both ports of a two port NIC simultaneously, but I didn't need both ports at 100% constantly.
 
Barometer said:
Ok, I think I see now.

This MB only has one PCI-EX 16 slot and two PCI-EX x1 slots.

So it won't work on this MB
Click to expand...

Any PCIe card can go into a x16 slot, it will just operate at the speed of the size card you installed. So in your instance your PCI-E x4 card will run in the PCI-Ex16 slot. The largest yellow one. However if you plan to run a performance video card you have no slots left for it.

Quad nics like that generally arent desktop level class so you will have a hard time finding a consumer board to fit it. A single GB network card generally comes with a x1 slot. Maybe check to see if you can get 2 PCI-Ex1 cards with dual ports? You would need to have supporting hardware to run the lanes you are wanting to use though.
 
A network card works through a mining rig extender, I've tried. A 10g card (pcie x4) with an extender to a pcie x1 slot on an old mATX MB reached about 200MB/s.
I've tried the card in the x16 slot and the videocard (GT1030) in the x1 slot (through the extender) and it worked Ok. Just the video performance felt a liiiittle bit lower in some circumstances but nothing major if network performance is more important for the machine.
Of course I wouldn't use this (test lab only) setup like that, it was just a test.
 
Last edited:
Thanks much for all the replies.
I ended up installing it into another PC that has onboard ATI Radeon graphics which opened up the PCIe x 16 slot and it is working fine there.

Now I just need to get pfSense installed and working.
 
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