Personal Project - Make a PCIe 1x Slot Compatible with Longer Cards Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,017 words · ~5 min read
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okay guys so part of my project with the server storage upgrade is that I'm going
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to be adding a remotely located server
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however I've run into um well it's just
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a minor hiccup but I thought it'd be an interesting tip so I need to take this
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LSI 9248 I uh raid card and I need to
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quickly cop all of the essential data that I'm going to be doing nightly
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synchronizations from this array the uh
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the 8 by 3 tbte array from my Windows Home Server so I don't want to do that
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first sync over the Internet so what I want to do is I want to install that other raid card in here um and then
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install the other drives in here so that I can do a do a quick Copy so the
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challenge is that this motherboard only
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has two PCIe 16x slots however based on
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some quick math um PCIe 1X 2.0 is good
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for 5.0 gigabit per second which is plenty for this PCIe 4X Ethernet card so
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what I really want to do is install the 4X card in that 1X slot so if you guys
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know about PCIe um you'll know that the first pins
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here these guys right here that's all your power and whatnot um and then
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everything from here on is data so the only thing that makes this a 1x slot and
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this a 16x slot is how many pins it has for bandwidth so some motherboard
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manufacturers are considered enough to leave these um edges open here so that
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you can install 4X or 16x cards in a 1x
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slot and they will work however my Intel
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board in my Home Server doesn't have the
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the ending open like that so to give myself the option of installing higher
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end cards in there what I have to do is
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and I'm hold on give me a sec guys so I've had a few promising ideas
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sorry guys I got to keep my voice down baby sleeping um but it looks like none
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of them are going to be applicable to um the uh the system that's installed
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already the motherboard that's in the case so idea number one was melting so I
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used my torch to heat up the tip of this
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blade and then slice through the back of it so that it would accommodate a bigger
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card now the problem with melting is that I had issues with some of the
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melted material moving this way towards the pins that's going to be a real big
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problem because you don't want to lose any pins from a PCI e1x interface so I
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scrapped that idea next idea was seeing if I could cut through the plastic with
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a razor blade and slice it on either
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side um the problem with that one was that it required far too much force and
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if you slip with a razor blade you're going to cut a bunch of traces and it's
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going to be bad all around and idea number three was to to use a Dremel use
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a cutting wheel on a Dremel to grind
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through the back of it this one looks like it's probably going to work but
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unfortunately with the other motherboard which is installed in a case with things
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in the way you can see I can't get the dremin straight and I don't have one of
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those extension bits so uh I'm stuck for
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now but uh thanks for coming along with me for the ride guys so I decided to
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pull the board out and we're just going to go for it um I haven't actually
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tested it success sucessfully on my test board yet but we're just going to use the Dremel and uh file out that back
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piece and see if we can install this PCIe 4X Nick card into the PCIe 1X slot
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where right now it's it won't fit so it'll run at 1X speed but PCIe 2.0 1X
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and this is a 2.0 card is a 5 GB per second so we should be okay all right so
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I did one run at it with the Dremel and cleared all the debris out hopefully you
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guys can see this but it's mostly clear
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one of the pins that top right one seems to have broken in half while I was
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dremeling but it looks like it should still make contact so it should still be
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able to pass data and it should be okay all this is in theory of course I don't
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recommend doing this at Home Folks um so
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I do have to take another pass at it because it's not quite clear I wish that
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my Dremel could run in reverse because then instead of throwing all of the gunk
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into the slot it could throw it out but
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uh such is life so I'm going to take another run at it and I'll see if I can fit the card in actually the card fits
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in now so let's just find out if it works here we go I'm throwing it back in
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the server lo and behold it works there's my four gigabit network adapters
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there's my network adapter installed in the bottom PCIe 1X slot and uh there's
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the network cables all plugged in so I've got my adaptech RAID card here for
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testing my Orica raid card that my actual storage runs off of and then my
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four port Nick all installed yay and all
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hopefully with enough bandwidth for what I'm using them for don't forget to
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subscribe to L Tech tip Zone also don't forget to wear appropriate safety
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glasses whenever working with a
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Dremel if I could hit the switch I could end this video