New Server, no 16x PCIe slot = 1+ Dremel + 1min cutting the card back. Works a treat. We did order a PCIe16x to PCIe8x converted but this made the card too high for our second DVI plug.
Yes. PCIe is designed like that. In most cheap SLI/CF mainboards, the PCIe 16x slots leave half the contacts disconnected (the slot is electrically PCIe 8x). This is exactly equivalent to what he's done here; the extra contacts are disconnected. You just have to be careful to ensure that the old traces don't touch each other and that the card is the correct length for the PCIe 8x slot.
i still call bs. and anyway... even if you can do that, that card he posted is a coaster, notice its cut into the next section.....
lol no? Are you talking about the PCIE holder part? which is supposed to be there? Im pretty sure the 'Works a treat' in the first post means its working...
Always good to be a pessimist but in this case we moved from a Lenovo PC to a Dell T300 with 15krpm 2x SAS Drives and a QuaD core X3363, the only catch was we could not get a good video card so we ordered a PCIe 16x to 8x adapter (see below) but that made the card too high to allow the second monitor top be plugged in. Here is the adapter we had: Also if you look at the pin outs ( http://pinouts.ru/Slots/pci_express_pinout.shtml ) of the PCIe 16x to 8x the pins are connected to auto detect rails to detect the existance of 16x then 8x then 4x then 1x. Enjoy
he means the edge next to where he cut, there is a cut or something over a few contacts. this isn't like that guy that cut off the PCIe 16x to fit in his AGP slot, i think it would work...but that cut doesn't look good. maybe its running @ 4x because of that
The boss OK'ed it and worst case we would have ordered new cards anyway. Here is a dump of the working system. We have a second one to do tomorrow.
Is there any particular reason you modded the card, as opposed to the slot? You can take the 'end' out (very carefully. ) of a slot, so that you can slot longer cards in, and then just tape up the exposed contacts on the card - that is unless you had some kind of layout issue.
Exactly. It made sense on all those cheap Dell SC430's where people were sticking $900 cards in $60 motherboards, but in this case cutting the card made way more sense.
Why not just cut the back out of the slot to allow the rest of the 16 lane card to hang out ? Avoids trashing a good card. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/249291-30-card
LOL! Way to read the thread buddy. EDIT:LOL! Way to not refresh very often. Already been shot down by the previous poster. haha pits.
why not just cut the back of the 8x PCI-E slot on the mobo so that the card will fit in uncut (like some mobos have)? a stanley knife would do the trick. so it would end up looking like this: http://www.hardwarezone.com/img/data/articles/2005/1567/K8NNeo4_PCiex41Dscn9826.jpg .
I've seen this done a fair bit, and yes it does work 100% to all the doubters, infact if you look at some cheaper gigabyte and old asus NF4 boards they have a second pci-e slot that is also missing the middle part of the slot as well. The ones i have seen have dremelled the end of the actual slot out as they were using highend videocards on the server board, again worked a treat. Well done btw also it being a server maybe upgrade the fans to something passive since those little bastards tend (the fans that is) to fail quite easily quickly on the cheap cards?