Recommend me a good PCIe x1 lane graphics card please.

Hi guys

I made the mistake of buying a sata card that was PCIe x2 (poorly described as it as it said it was compatible with PCIe x1 slots when it isn't) so have ended up using my graphics card slot to accommodate it. Little bit annoyed by this as it's cost me £40 and it has to go in the slot I didn't want it to go into.... but nevermind!

So this has left me with the PCIe x1 slot that I intended to use free. As I planned on putting a graphics card in my little home server to give a better boost over the inbuilt graphics (i3 2100).

I'm after a PCIe x1 lane card now. Main use will be for Open CL to speed up Capture One Pro for when I'm editing my photos.

I had a look around and have found a R5 230 1GB GDDR3 card and seen a Zotac Passive GT 730. Apart from that I'm not sure what's best?

Anyone with experience with these low power cards recommend the best bang for buck in a PCIe x1 slot and with more recent tech please?

Thanks

You might want to investigate the option of putting a x2 or higher card in your x1 slot - some are open ended for this purpose, but you can also make a cut in the end to do the same and it'll still work - it'll just use the 4 lanes it can and remaining lanes on cards don't have to be connected.

I did think about this but not sure how easy it is to cut a notch in the PCIe x1 slot. If it was open ended slot on the mobo then problem solved I would have put the SATA card in there but not sure I'd trust myself in case something happens to the mobo.

EDIT: Or perhaps this?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com.../dp/B0039XPS5W

I'd be surprised if you find a GPU with a 1X connector. Something like this for your SATA card is probably better:
http://www.startech.com/PCI-Express-...apter~PEX1TO16

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dbh

Hi guys

I made the mistake of buying a sata card that was PCIe x2 (poorly described as it as it said it was compatible with PCIe x1 slots when it isn't) so have ended up using my graphics card slot to accommodate it. Little bit annoyed by this as it's cost me £40 and it has to go in the slot I didn't want it to go into.... but nevermind!

So this has left me with the PCIe x1 slot that I intended to use free. As I planned on putting a graphics card in my little home server to give a better boost over the inbuilt graphics (i3 2100).

I'm after a PCIe x1 lane card now. Main use will be for Open CL to speed up Capture One Pro for when I'm editing my photos.

I had a look around and have found a R5 230 1GB GDDR3 card and seen a Zotac Passive GT 730. Apart from that I'm not sure what's best?

Anyone with experience with these low power cards recommend the best bang for buck in a PCIe x1 slot and with more recent tech please?

Thanks

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Which motherboard are you using? The P5Q Deluxe in your system description has two x16 slots, doesn't it?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by herulach

I'd be surprised if you find a GPU with a 1X connector. Something like this for your SATA card is probably better:
http://www.startech.com/PCI-Express-...apter~PEX1TO16

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An interesting solution, but I wonder how you fix the card in place - presumably the adapter means you can't screw in the backplate as usual?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrJim

An interesting solution, but I wonder how you fix the card in place - presumably the adapter means you can't screw in the backplate as usual?

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It says to use it with half height cards so the assumption is if you use the adapter with a half height card / half height back plate that this will screw into the full size slot.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kanoe

It says to use it with half height cards so the assumption is if you use the adapter with a half height card / half height back plate that this will screw into the full size slot.

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Ah...didn't read that far, thanks :)

This is for my machine using a H61M-U3S3.

I decided to buy the PCIe x1 to x16 adapter and just move the SATA card to it once it arrives. Then can keep the x16 slot free for a proper graphics card when I need it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dbh

I decided to buy the PCIe x1 to x16 adapter and just move the SATA card to it once it arrives. Then can keep the x16 slot free for a proper graphics card when I need it.

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How many ports does the SATA card support? The single PCIe lane might inhibit drive performance, depending on the type & number of drives you have attached to it...

It's a 4 port one here:

PE-123i (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4-por...e-host-adapter)

Have this hooked up to a 6 bay 5.25" Icy Dock and got the remaining two slots connected to the mobo's 2x sata 3 ports. Nothing plugged into those drives at the moment...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dbh

I decided to buy the PCIe x1 to x16 adapter and just move the SATA card to it once it arrives. Then can keep the x16 slot free for a proper graphics card when I need it.

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Probably wise. The only x1 GPUs that are readily available are GT610s and R5 230s - or, as they're more commonly known, the GT 220* and HD 5450. Yup, both NV and AMD are essentially supporting the entry level GPU market with essentially 5 year old technology.... *sigh*

*EDIT: I might be being unfair here - the 610's more like to be a rebadged GT520 (a second gen Fermi part), which is at least only 3 1/2 years old....

*EDIT2: what exactly are you planning on doing with a home server that will require better than HD graphics?

I wanted a better graphics card to help speed up the rendering of my photos from the program Capture One Pro. To be honest it's not a must have but as the onboard HD2000 doesn't support OpenCL I want to get a relatively low power but fast enough chip that I can utilise to speed up the export of the images.

The Zotac GT 730 PCIe X1 seems like it would be great (Has more CUDA cores than the others) but haven't been able to find it in stock anywhere. Dabs lists it for under £50 but again no luck finding it in stock.

At the same time as Mr Jim said it might be better I just leave the SATA card in the X16 slot as it might hinder disk performance. I can live with those 4 bays at slight reduced speed as the other 2 bays can get full SATA 3...

It's having the option to switch the cards around though that this adapter allows. Only problem is if I do use the adapter with to put a video card on the PCIe X1 side it'd need to be low profile.

Blimey the costs are mounting up.

The 4 port card and x1 to x16 adapter are getting on for the cost of an FM2+ motherboard with 8 native SATA ports.
The graphics card would be the cost of an A8-7600 APU with decent graphics on board.

The cost of those SATA boards has always boggled me!

Tell me about it :( but then I'd probably have to factor in the cost of buying new RAM etc too. Perhaps the graphics card can wait for now!

I'll keep the AMD option as a full upgrade for later. I can then put the i3 into smaller box for another use then if I decide to go that route :)