Okay, so I'm sitting in my office looking at a motherboard
and I'm like, all right,
so you got all these PCI Express slots, right?
The graphics card goes here,
but then you got all these other ones.
What are people actually putting on these things?
So I started clicking around on AliExpress.
I'm like, wow, there's some really weird stuff
that you can put in a PCI Express slot.
So I issued a challenge.
Actually, rather I asked Jake to issue a challenge
to four other members of our writing staff
to scour eBay, Wish, AliExpress and more
and find what they believe is
the weirdest PCI Express expansion card.
We've provided no definition for weirdest.
It's going to be down to judgment from your peers
who managed to find the weirdest thing.
And I'm participating as well, so.
And Dennis is here in spirit.
And the winner gets a trophy, right?
Yes, and it's engraved
in everything.
Where is it?
Well, you can't see it yet.
You have to show it to them.
It's a surprise.
You know what's not a surprise?
The fact that I'm going to segue to our sponsor right now.
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Two, all right, Riley, you're going first.
All right.
Okay, Riley's first.
See how nonchalant I am about this?
Because that's the amount of confidence I have.
Stop it, only I can.
Not one, not two.
Not three.
Wait, are these just mining risers?
Listen.
It's a cool one.
Wait, you had to buy these?
This is a small, very small PCIe card.
Ever seen something like that?
What's that?
USB ports.
Yeah.
That goes in there.
Yeah.
USB into a USB.
Yeah.
Do you know the potential of this?
No.
You could just keep going forever.
Adding more and more.
Let's find out.
PCI cards.
Okay, so.
Look, that goes in here.
Can we just?
Wait, wait, whoa, the bench is on.
Wait, wait, wait.
No, I turned it off.
Turn the power supply off.
No, that can't go in there.
That can't go in there.
Yes, it can.
No, I don't think this is a PCIe X16
or whatever it is.
Yes, it is.
Is it?
Yes.
Kind of the entire point.
Riley, did you even know what you were buying?
No, I didn't.
Okay.
Huzzah.
So our USB graphics card is working.
So what is this, like a PLX chip here?
Definitely, that's definitely what it is.
Yes, please.
I have no idea.
Like, what is the pin mapping here though?
Like.
This is what you call a USB port.
There's only nine conductors.
Yeah.
Well, that's all you need.
I suppose you don't need that many.
Okay, well, it works.
So like.
Does it have ray tracing?
Yeah.
So this is an RTX 2070 on, what is this?
8700K.
An 8700K.
So we should be expecting somewhere in the neighborhood
of 250 plus FPS.
Okay.
Well, let's see how we do here then, shall we?
Yeah, so basically what's happening is
instead of just converting PCI Express
to a USB-K,
which is kind of like just using a PCI Express riser,
except you're using the USB connector and cable,
it's taking the same PCIe 1X interface,
using some kind of a PLX or hub chip of some sort
or switching chip,
and then it's turning the single 1X interface
into four 1X interfaces.
And so this is probably fine,
but if we were to hook four graphics cards up
at the same time,
and all four of them were actually doing something.
We'd be chugging.
We'd be,
not.
And you don't want to do that right now.
Gaming-wise.
You don't want to try that.
What, daisy-chaining?
No, I don't think there's any point daisy-chaining them,
but running all four of them.
Yes.
You could.
Let's do it.
Just try daisy-chaining it once.
Okay, turn the power supply off.
All right.
If you factor out the-
Really?
Shorting out the board.
Oh, power move.
You know what?
It did it.
That FPS though is not,
this was not ideal.
Okay.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
We lost.
We just cut our FPS in half.
Just see how many noobs you can pwn.
That's pretty rough.
Oh!
Man, you're time traveling.
For your consideration,
you have before you a system that could enable you
to place a GPU anywhere in your house
while keeping your regular PC right next to you.
So, pretty awesome.
But at what cost?
At the cost of a few frames.
A few.
What is that?
What are frames?
And here we have a PCI oscilloscope.
Whoa.
Wait, it's PCI?
Oh.
How does that work?
Wait, how does that work?
Well, I assumed you would get at least a PCI express card.
Oh!
Excuse me.
I thought there was sort of a minimum bar here for like-
Actually, you told me specifically PCIe or PCI.
That's true.
This was a conversation that we had.
Okay, well then why didn't your test bench
have a PCI slot on it, smart guy?
Well, I wasn't expecting anybody to do it,
especially for something that costs $600.
More like seven.
$700.
Are those PCIs?
No, those are PCI-X.
See you later.
What are those?
Is that the right one?
No, that's not that.
That's not a PCI, right?
Yeah, that's PCI.
Wait, what?
We can't.
Yeah, nothing's happening.
Yeah, it doesn't post with it in it,
so there's nothing that we can reconfigure to.
So, this is something
that is actually pretty cool for me.
So, that's a 7950GX2.
Yes.
I thought this was super cool
because I had never seen
that this is how they used to actually do dual GPU cards.
Basic.
It's literally two,
Riley didn't even know.
I think it's cool.
Yeah.
I've never seen this.
Instead of like your Titan Z, Zed, whatever,
if you're Canadian or not,
how they had those two GPUs on one card,
they actually just gave you two cards
that were like duct taped together
and you get one slot and you just stick it in.
And that's how you did quad SLI back in the day.
GPU sandwich.
You made two of these.
Yeah.
So, this one apparently worked,
but when I got it,
actually had one of the capacitors knocked off
and then this one was like falling off.
So, did you hot glue it on?
No, hold on.
I stole this capacitor from another motherboard
because the leads were broken
and then to kind of keep it from breaking,
I put some hot glue on there as a sort of elastic.
So, hopefully it works.
I put a lot of, that genuinely took me like an hour.
This was back when they used to
really falsely advertise these cards.
So, it's got one gig, 512 bit on the back,
but I'm pretty sure what they mean is
two times 512 megabytes.
Let's check our eBay ad here.
256 bit.
Oh, I'm looking at the card itself.
I'm saying our eBay seller was an honest guy.
Okay.
He said two by half a gig.
Okay.
He's a good guy.
Oh my God, it worked.
Yay!
Shut up.
That's sweet.
I don't know.
Getting pretty close to Alex territory.
Here.
Hey, the computer turned on.
That's true.
That's pretty different.
You're on the podium.
You can believe whatever you want.
There's no way there's a Windows 10 driver.
I'd be surprised if there's a Windows 7 driver for this.
That's a dead video card.
He said it was working.
So, these look like dead pixels kind of, but they're not.
Please don't waste time DDUing it.
Just, you can try and install your driver,
but like it's not gonna work and your card is broken.
It lets you select it.
And then it's like, yeah.
I can't believe how much money you guys spent on-
$70.
And not working hardware.
It was damaged in shipping though.
30 bucks.
You don't sound convinced.
Yes!
Woo!
We're in the BIOS.
Oh, and this is the deluxe.
Nice.
All right.
Get them.
Nice.
We're really-
Nice.
It's like a horse race where the horse and race in first.
Okay.
So you have other problems coming for you though.
No race defined.
What OS were you planning to boot here?
I have Windows 7 32 bit.
Oh yeah.
On that drive.
Oh yeah?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Is that not gonna happen?
No.
No?
Okay.
What do I boot on this?
XP.
Oh, Jesus.
Oh, it's working.
Look at these pads.
Okay, to be fair.
It's like this graphics card.
This graphics card transports the character models
back to the era it came from.
Are you telling me right now that this is working
because I'm physically holding a capacitor in place
on the graphics card?
Let's try that and go in a minute.
Like, is your finger comfortable?
Are you good?
It's kind of warm, but I'm fine.
All right.
How do we save?
I assume that just saved.
Don't, why would you-
Oh my God.
What?
No way!
You have to get a shot.
Can you please play?
Oh.
I saw it.
This is starting to burn my finger.
Here, tag me in, buddy.
Oh, you gotta, you can't just let.
What?
That's what did it?
It just stopped?
You can't just let go.
It stopped as soon as I let go.
Oh, this thing is holding on the power.
Oh, Colonel.
That's, that's Jake right there.
Why did you let go?
Look at my finger.
Give me a shot of it.
I'm just gonna give it the old.
Oh God.
There we are.
Literally repairing this graphics card with scotch tape.
And the same artifacts.
That's crappy.
Wait, are you telling me that the tape is doing a better job
than Riley ever could?
My finger was burning.
You let go of it.
You could have like-
What do you want me to do?
Okay, it's working.
Claiming at about eight FPS.
Oh, I got, I assisted.
Oh, okay.
No artifacts.
No artifacts, it's the best GPU.
No artifacts to speak of.
This is exactly what we need right now.
You plug this in, it's a fan.
Ostensibly, it just blows air right away.
And the bonus part is-
Right away.
It can cool down your glued on capacitors
and make your other stuff work.
Was this planned?
Value on value.
Was this planned?
No, that's just how handy these are.
You need this in your life right now.
Let me show you how this works.
You know what's really good about them?
I'm pretty sure the plastic is UV reactive.
Jesus.
We really need it.
This is how those infomercials always start.
Look, the package says-
Comes with headphones.
Light it up.
It's lit.
What the heck?
This doesn't even count.
It doesn't even have anything.
We might need to modify it.
The slot, like, yeah, it slots in.
It's for PCI.
This is super old.
Oh, we can use it to cool my stuff.
I think it came with Amazon Prime, actually.
This was in stock, ready to go.
I'm confused as to like,
why does it look like it's a children's toy
from a dollar store?
Because this used to be the style
when it came to like,
hardcore PC modding.
I'm not even joking.
Unlike some people, I only spent $20.
But wait, there's more.
Look at this little dial.
You can go from low to high AF.
It does fit in a PCIe slot, sort of.
So it's going to blow air at the front.
What about the-
Thank goodness for ROG shielding stuff.
Okay, it's fine, I'll do it.
Okay.
Um. Here we go.
Here we go, ladies and gentlemen.
I'll put it down on the low setting.
Oh my God.
And it turned off, but the lights are on.
Little lower, little lower, yep.
Is it too much?
One fan works.
Wait, really?
It might not be enough power.
No, it's plenty of power.
Barely even blowing any air.
Okay, so James is done.
I still need to go.
But in the meantime, we have an update over in Alex land.
We have a hard drive detected.
Optical drive detected.
And theoretically, we have a Windows XP boot CD.
Have you ever seen an Ethernet card this small?
Yeah, the one that I'd had.
Yeah, but it's USB.
Oh, an Ethernet card.
This is how I intend to plug it in.
Now, you'll have to give me a moment, gentlemen.
Ahem.
So first, I will be needing, ah, yes.
The Vakind mini PCIe to PCIe converter wireless.
This.
Oh, I wait, that's not that interesting.
All right.
I need an iFixit kit as well.
I, I have my sincere doubts as to whether
or not this is going to work.
At this point, we have gone from PCI Express 1X
to mini PCIe to PCMCIA.
I just need this.
Here.
Here we go.
So this goes in, this is PCMCIA.
It was an old laptop expansion standard.
Is it going this way?
This way or this way?
I don't actually know.
That way.
Yep, okay.
Cool.
I like that spring action.
To USB.
Wait, what?
Hold on, ladies and gentlemen.
Is the USB port on the end of the PC and the CIA?
Okay, to-
Riley, he might be able to get this farther away
from his PC than even yours.
Dual PCI Express 16X.
Then we've got a PCI Express 4X interface
at the bottom of this card here
that we have adapted, using this card, to U.2.
Then we've got a U.2 to M.2 board installed in that,
which has an M.2 to U.2, the other end,
like mini SAS HD, whatever this is called.
Then we've got a mini SAS HD to U.2 over here,
plugged into a board that does U.2 to PCI Express 4X,
where finally we have installed a network card.
Now, will this work?
I have no idea.
It doesn't smell like my ex graphics card.
Something just burned.
Oh.
That smells.
Yep.
Oh, what happened?
I like that smell.
Hold on a minute.
No, I still have an entry.
Because I did convert back to PCI Express at some point,
I can cut out some parts of my chain here.
My submission is a PCI Express to U.2, to M.2, to U.2,
to U.2, to PCI Express 4X, to network adapter.
Get out of my way.
Whoa!
The disrespect.
Well, the slot that I wanted to plug into is broken
because of my previous attempt.
I wonder if my network card is dead.
Okay, because even that didn't work.
This should be pretty straightforward.
This is just PCIe to...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now, hold on just a gosh darn minute here.
The whole time.
Is it just a bad network card?
Oh, because that's why it was going to set on fire, right?
Okay, right?
All right.
It honestly feels the same on both sides.
Okay, wait for it.
I don't know.
That's because the air is going in, though.
This is it, ladies and gentlemen.
My time.
My time to shine.
It's my time in the sun.
You know what this is like?
Let me speak your language.
It's like in Fortnite,
when you get shot and you're crawling around,
but you're not dead yet,
but there's no way you're going to win.
Yeah.
That's these two.
Just log out.
Nope.
Turn your computer off.
I'm installing drivers as we speak.
I am moments away from having this fully operational.
Okay, okay.
My entry is...
This graphics card.
What?
I mean, network card.
Isn't it adorable?
Oh, that's cute.
Yeah, wow.
You didn't kill anything in putting that in.
Yay, I've got a link.
Can we get close up?
Meanwhile, over in Alex land, how are we doing?
So it seems like it is working.
Here it is, I think.
Yeah.
So now we just need a program to use it.
You didn't even know what program?
So we would need to install LabVIEW
and then it should work just fine.
How much is a LabVIEW license?
I don't know.
Okay.
I think we just have to do the voting now.
You have to vote for two people.
And the competition is without any real guidelines,
the weirdest PCI or PCIe device.
The weirdest.
Starting with the most disappointing thing of tonight,
me and James with just one vote.
Oh.
And then you get Linus with two.
With two.
Hey, I'm on the podium, baby.
With two.
Yeah.
And then it's Alex with four.
So we all suck.
Woo!
Yeah.
So I'm happy to present you today.
That's it?
Just shut up.
I don't know how to open it, but this is a quality.
We have scissors.
No, it's good. We're good.
This was the coolest, weirdest trophy I could find.
Such a mad dog.
What?
Best weird finder 2019.
There you go.
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