Yup, use a PCI device in a 1 lane PCIe slot. The Inquirer can't work out why you'd want to, though.[The Inquirer]This is an adapter that will fit into your motherboard’s spare PCIe x1 slot, the one that’s often right next to your graphics card, so you can’t plug anything into it, and give you an additional PCI slot… at the wrong height.
Yep – stick a sound card into one of these and you’ll be unable to shut your case, or secure the card as far as we can tell!
So, putting on my smart arse hat, I have a couple of reasons:
1. Use a low profile PCI card, that'll fit with the device in place.
2. This could be adapted as a riser for HTPCs, where the uATX motherboard slot arrangement makes it impossible to use a regular PCI riser.
OK, so one solution requires you actually have a low profile device that absolutely must go into that slot, and the other has a very limited market, but still, at least I came up with something to justify the damn thing.
Still, they're right, other than that it seems like a pretty pointless product.