HD4350, a PCI-E x1 Slot and a Dremel (Tons of Pics Warning).

[Yukikaze]

Well, I have no idea what might be causing it. I haven't tried this on a large amount of motherboards, so I really don't know how I can help you out.

 

[Taz100420]

Yea it seems my Abit An-52 dont like a vid card in the x1 slot either. The cards fan turns on but nothing pops up in the Nvidia control panel or device manager. and If I try to just boot from the x1 slot, I get the no graphics card beeps lol

 

[SaperPL]

Ill try installing the card in the pci-e x1 slot on cheap mobo with nforce4(ill cut through the end of the slot) next weekend at home. Until than lets suppose that nforce4 doesnt support pci-e x1 VGA's

 

[lemonadesoda]

Hats off! to a great thread, explanation, and method.

But why not just buy one of these?

A PCIe riser card. Less than $10. No risk. Original card stays intact.

 

[Yukikaze]

Hats off! to a great thread, explanation, and method.

But why not just buy one of these?

http://img.techpowerup.org/091122/Capture185.jpg

A PCIe riser card.

A riser means the card will not fit in a standard slot, since it will be higher.

Other than that, no real reason not to buy that.

Well, the chance exists you wanna do it to some old card you don't mind killing and don't want to spend money on anything else, (or cannot obtain one) but that is a rather weak argument.

 

[lemonadesoda]

LOL. Of course it will fit, unless it is a slimline case. Look inside your case and you will see about 3-5cm headroom in an ATX case, and more in a tower or server case. The 2cm used by the riser will not cause a problem. You just might need a longer screw to hold the card in place. And it certainly isnt a problem in this example, because THIS THREAD USES A LOW_PROFILE CARD!!!

Oh, and for anyone wanting to practice different channel setups, get a bunch of these, and cut them to x4, x8 etc. and have some fun

 

[Yukikaze]

LOL. Of course it will fit, unless it is a slimline case. Look inside your case and you will see about 3-5cm headroom in an ATX case, and more in a tower or server case. The 2cm used by the riser will not cause a problem. ESPECIALLY SINCE THIS THREAD USES A LOW_PROFILE CARD!!!

Oh, and for anyone wanting to practice different channel setups, get a bunch of these, and cut them to x4, x8 etc. and have some fun

http://img.techpowerup.org/091122/Capture186.jpg

You miss the point.

It will fit the case, but you won't be able to apply the screw (Or the tool-less clip) to it in order to secure it in place, and if you do it to a non-LP card, the top video output (Say, DVI) may no longer fit, or become blocked by the part of the case to which expansion cards are attached.

 

[SaperPL]

Its good choice but in my country's stores such stuff costs horrobly above 60$ and its even hard to find that.

 

[lemonadesoda]

No I didnt miss the point. You did. The point is: There are options.

What works for you, might not be the "right" solution for others. I'm not forcing you to adopt the riser approach. But it is probably the easiest and risk-free approach and totally-suitable for some other people, depening on their setup. And a great way to test if the card/mainboard is compatible with the hack. There are many stories in this thread of it not working for some... and in the process, they dont know if they had a bad chop or an incompatible mainboard. This lets them test... even KEEP if it works for them.

 

[Yukikaze]

No I didnt miss the point. You did. The point is: There are options.

Options which are not viable in pretty much any standard case setting are not options, do you not agree ?

Anyway, this argument is pointless.

 

[Yukikaze]

No I didnt miss the point. You did. The point is: There are options.

What works for you, might not be the "right" solution for others. I'm not forcing you to adopt the riser approach.

Eh, in my first reply to you I said the only reason not to use it is because it will not fit in a standard case afterwards. You tried to explain why it would, to which I showed you why it will not fit.

I never said others should not use it, that one you came up with.

Like I said, pointless.

 

[SaperPL]

I just cut off the end of pci-e X1 in my nf4 4x mobo and the same thing happens - card powers up but no signal. Additionaly windows doesn't recongise any new devices. Dunno if there's anything else to try.

 

[lemonadesoda]

What a shame you didnt test it first with one of these:

 

[SaperPL]

I dont get ur point - this mobo isnt on warranty anymore and i dont give a **** about this pc - it has venice 3000+ and 1 gig of ram onboard. My main pc's (with quad K8 cores and 4 gigs of ram) mobo is still untouched. I'm thinking about quick mobo replacemnt at the end of the year for Gigabyte's GA-2CEWH. The point is that CK804 doesn't support VGA cards on secondary and tertiary pci-e slots or doesnt support x16 line cutting and if u want two cards u need to get the one with nforce4 SLI which is really two times x8 modes slots in sli mode or dual southbridge mobo like nf4 pro 2200 + nf4 pro 2050 on the GA-2CEWH or NFPIK8AA or any other like tyan thunders. As i said before i don't wanna waste cash for something like this if not sure if it's gonna work.

 

[chalk210]

This is a beautiful thread. Megakudos to the OP. It looks like the cards that variations have been attempted have been models that have a stock x1 alternative-- has anybody tried it on a card that has not been marketed with an x1 equivalent? The left over Pins will be the same, but I wonder if there could be limitations imposed from the drivers, etc?

 

[Geofrancis]

you could get something like this tto check if it workd before you cut anything
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/StarTech-PCI-...ting_DesktopComponents_RL&hash=item439f68b5c3

 

[chalk210]

Yeah, I'm going to start with something similar to that. I'm going to get a 1x riser which you can get for a song, and try to cut an opening (under $5 post paid) and just let the rest of the card hang out. That's just to try it out. I usually leave my case all apart anyway.

 

[Yukikaze]

This is a beautiful thread. Megakudos to the OP. It looks like the cards that variations have been attempted have been models that have a stock x1 alternative-- has anybody tried it on a card that has not been marketed with an x1 equivalent? The left over Pins will be the same, but I wonder if there could be limitations imposed from the drivers, etc?

I have not tried it on video cards, but I do it to all sorts of NICs and NIC prototypes at work. Since the prototypes are FPGA-based, they are large and bulky, and do not fit in a case, so they use PCIe extenders anyway. I have often used PCIe x1 extenders with x2, x4 and x8 cards and it NEVER failed to work because a connection with less lanes is part of the PCIe standard.

 

[newtekie1]

There are some graphics cards and motherboard combinations that won't allow the card to run at x1. I know W1z couldn't get his GTX480 to boot at x1. Also, when Tomshardware did their PCI-E Scaling article, they had to go through several motherboards and BIOSes before they found one that would let the cards work at x1. Though both times it was with high end cards(for the time), that I wouldn't want to be running at x1 anyway.

 

[chalk210]

I wonder how a geforce 9500 would do in a 1x lane.

 

[chalk210]

Okay, gang, I've decided to give it a go.

For the first step, I got this 1x riser for a couple of bucks that I melted on one end to hopefully receive a 16x card and work right.

I've ordered a used Radeon 4350 x16 for $15USD (will take 2 weeks to ship to me, part of the low cost of the deal)


I've rendered a spare bracket to account for additional height if necessary. $0, spare parts. I've got plenty of space in the other directions.


Total cost under $20 compared to stock 1x versions of the card that are selling for $90-$120USD.



If that don't work, I may consider dremeling it in the manner of the original poster.

Why?

Because we can

 

[chalk210]

Sorry, if this is an inappropriate thread resurrection, but in case there are still people curious, I have now performed this operation on both a radeon 4350 and now a geforce 9500.

Proceed at your own risk.

I prefer the results overall with the slightly more expensive 9500, but the 4350 was not without a few merits especially in physical dimensions.

Also, I would like to announce that I think I've coined a word for this procedure. I don't think anybody has thought of it yet but apologies if I'm not the first.... "underlaning" So, I have successfully underlaned both a x16 radeon 4350 and a x16 geforce 9500 gt in a x1 test system.

Absolute kudos for the OP for giving me the courage to give it a try. I had a lot of fun.

 

[Yukikaze]

Sorry, if this is an inappropriate thread resurrection, but in case there are still people curious, I have now performed this operation on both a radeon 4350 and now a geforce 9500.

Proceed at your own risk.

I prefer the results overall with the slightly more expensive 9500, but the 4350 was not without a few merits especially in physical dimensions.

Also, I would like to announce that I think I've coined a word for this procedure. I don't think anybody has thought of it yet but apologies if I'm not the first.... "underlaning" So, I have successfully underlaned both a x16 radeon 4350 and a x16 geforce 9500 gt in a x1 test system.

Absolute kudos for the OP for giving me the courage to give it a try. I had a lot of fun.

Cool to know I've sent more people on the way towards graphic-card-sawing-insanity

Also very happy to hear the cards survived!

 

[muchgooder]

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread (again).

I've got a 440sc and I've been using it as a media streamer (to my ps3) for a while now. I'd like to get a projector in my home theater and turn this server into a true htpc.

Will the 3450 be able to play 3d movies without problem? I've read mixed reviews and I wasn't quite sure how to interpret the screen shots in this thread.

If not the 3450, is there a better card that I can snip to fit in this case? They are fairly cheap on ebay and I found out the hard way how expensive these motherboards are. I did pick up a riser card on ebay already so that I can test before I snip.

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[Mussels]

i dont think the 3450 can do 3D movies, i think you need a 6K card for that.

I'm pretty sure there are physically small 6K cards out and about.