cuting x16 to x1

[jetfire]

has anyone here tried this with any success.

this guy seems to have made it work. http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=88791

cant get a ati 4350 x1 til middle of march and running out of options.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would look at using an adaptor:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?W...source=froogle

http://linitx.com/viewcategory.php?c...pp=161,165,204

[jetfire]

i did look at using a adaptor but it whould mean cutting section out the back of the case.

also id rather cut a £20 gfx card if it can be done than have to mod a custom built case that cost £200

[Funkstar]

You're sod out of luck if you need it in a low profile case though. Unless you can use a flexible adapter and have a PCI lot in the case without a motherboard slot behind it.

[Pob255]

You can also get motherboards with open pci-e slots or carefully cut the back out of the slot.

Works with any pci-e not just x1 although you may well criple the bandwidth the card needs, but for a low end card that shouldn't be an issue.

Just don't do the classic one of cutting a pci-e card to fit into an AGP slot.

Must admit I was shocked when I first found out you could cut down a card/cut open a slot.

[DDY]

I've done the x16 to x1 slot cut mod succesfully to a £20 ATI Radeon HD 2350, it wasn't difficult and only took a few minutes with a dremel.

[jetfire]

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I've done the x16 to x1 slot cut mod succesfully to a £20 ATI Radeon HD 2350, it wasn't difficult and only took a few minutes with a dremel.

so if you cut a x16 slot to a x8 slot or x4 slot whould that give more bandwidth or even work.? as i have never seen anything other than a x1 or x16 slot gfx card.

[DDY]

so if you cut a x16 slot to a x8 slot or x4 slot whould that give more bandwidth or even work.? as i have never seen anything other than a x1 or x16 slot gfx card.

Cutting a x16 card to x8 or x4 would work, cutting a card from x16 to 8x effectively halves the bandwidth, cutting it down to x4 takes bandwidth down to a quarter and x1 to a sixteenth. Reducing the bandwidth also reduces performance, however many cards don't fully utilise the full bandwidth of a x16 PCI-E slot and reducing the bandwidth to a certain degree shouldn't have a noticeable impact on performance.

Faster cards that require large bandwidths may suffer a considerable loss of performance if their bandwidth is reduced by modding them to x8 cards, lower ranged cards may see negligible performance drops running at reduced bandwidths of x4 let alone x8.

In my example, the HD2350 is not a fast card, it would struggle to saturate a x1 PCI-E lane and modding it from x16 to x1 will not have an impact on its performance at all.

[ajones]

I'm with Pob on this one. Why go through the bother of chopping the graphics card when you can more easily open the PCI-Ex slot. OK, you void your Mobo warranty but it's an easier mod.

[Funkstar]

I'm with Pob on this one. Why go through the bother of chopping the graphics card when you can more easily open the PCI-Ex slot. OK, you void your Mobo warranty but it's an easier mod.

You do quite often get components in line of the back of the slot though, preventing you from actually installing a longer card. I would rather mess up a £20 graphics card than a £50+ motherboard.

[scaryjim]

In my example, the HD2350 is not a fast card

That's putting it mildly

@ 400MHz Core and 500MHz DDR2 on a 32bit interface it's actually less powerful than my HD4200 that I'm running *just* off the Sideport memory! Yes - a discrete card that's less powerful than onboard graphics

[ajones]

You do quite often get components in line of the back of the slot though, preventing you from actually installing a longer card. I would rather mess up a £20 graphics card than a £50+ motherboard.

Fair enough. Must admit I'd not thought of that!

[scaryjim]

so if you cut a x16 slot to a x8 slot or x4 slot whould that give more bandwidth or even work.?

I think for an x8 I'd rather mod the motherboard, as there are unlikely to be many components tight behind a longer slot anyway. As funkstar says though, there's so much room behind an x1 slot that they often got components tagged in behind them, so in that case it's probably going to be the card that gets chopped

I certainly wouldn't do it with a card that cost any more than £20 though, and I wouldn't do it with anything more powerful than the absolute bottom rung of a particular generation, The 2350 was actually one step *below* the official bottom rung of that generation, and makes a perfect card for this kind of mod.