I’m looking at quad port 2.5Gbe Intel PCIe cards. These cards seem to be mostly x4 physically (usually PCIe gen 3) whilst I have a PCIe Gen4 X1 slot, which is more the theoretical bandwidth that the card can support. The card needs at the most PCIE Gen 3 X2 == PCIE Gen 4 X1 in terms of bandwidth.
How do I fit the card into a PCIe x1 slot? Won’t it lose performance if all the pins are not connected to the physical PCIe connector? Is there a PCIe x1 riser that the community likes that is somewhat affordable?
Thanks
There’s another situation. There are older (and cheaper cards) which are PCIe gen 2 x8. Unfortunately, pcie gen 2 x1 is not going to suffice. What would I have to do to get this older kind of card to work? Do you have any reliable PCIe x1 to x16 risers in mind?
You also just plug it in. But again, no guarantee it’ll work. Even if you get a riser, most of them are just physical adapters. The fancier server ones do have some brain to them, but I don’t know if it would help.
You could also just sidestep the problem and use some USB adapters.
PCIe to USB and back to PCIe like what the miners use? Isn’t that unreliable long-term?
No, just a USB network adapter.
Yeah, going along these lines. There is probably a USB header on the motherboard. These have pretty darn good speeds. You can get an adapter that lets you turn those into a USB-C port and then use a standard USB-C to Ethernet adapter. Something like this or this. No guarantee on either of those specific adapters being good though. Looks like slim pickings for such things and both of those are garbage brands.
If you have a USB-C port on the back of your motherboard, you can get an adapter for that directly.
Also, motherboards generally come with 2.5Gb/s ports now too. Some even have two. Something to consider.