Depending on the CPU, chipset and motherboard design, plugging anything in the second PCI-E x16 slot can slow down your main PCI-E slot from x16 to an x8. Consult your motherboard manual, it's usually described there if it applies to your specific one. Slowing down to x8 may not impact performance, but this depends on the PCI-E version and type of your GPU (faster GPUs will saturate slot quicker).
Also this type of PCIe lane bifurcation can cause weird issues on some mainboards. In this case the first lane goes to the WiFi card, the next 7 lanes go nowhere and the last 8 go to the GPU in the primary slot. Same thing with an x4 NVME in the secondary slot. It may work perfectly fine for you but if you experience BSODs, freezes, driver crashes it's a good bet removing the secondary device fixes it.
@@muamercormehic4843 Second m2 slot could be routed through chipset, so the GPU would still stay at x16 or, depending on the platform, you can have gen5 m2_1, gen4 m2_2 and still have x16 on the GPU. Really depends on your CPU and mobo combination and generation.
you mean the m.2 slot? yeah ive seen it. Makes sense as m.2 is basically PCIe as an alternative connector. NVMe is just a Storage-Protocol (preferably spoken via PCIe), not a slot. Problem with the m.2 Wifi cards is that these almost never have reasonable antennas
@@v61kz Oh does it? Guess i've been using broken wifi and bluetooth on my desktop for the last 8 years, and whoever sold me my laptop is a scam artist because my laptop is metal, so i'm guessing it's wireless connections are also broken.
@@codybeck5425the wifi antenna in a laptop is in the hinge, it doesn't encounter as much interference as it would in a desktop case filled with other parts
To make it even more fun: those lower "full length" PCI slots shown here have a full length (16x) connector but only a quarter to half of it's lenght has actual contacts (4x or 8x speed) You can see it if you look close.
lol are you still in the 90's? wifi is so reliable nowadays you can hardly tell the difference unless you're in some kind of pro tournament, which most people aren't. looks like you really wanna look into upgrading your parts there buddy.
@@4536647674it’s very useful for extreme reliability and fast downloads like let’s be honest who wants to sit and wait hours to download some games or even big updates
@@4536647674Depends on where you live. For me it's a big difference. In CS2, I always get about 20ms ping with Ethernet, and about 40-80ms ping with some inconsistency on wifi. But generally speaking, Ethernet is still a huge upgrade over wifi for 99% of people.
Just check your manual about what you lose when you use your bottom full length slot. They're usually an "x16" length slot running at "x4" or "x8", anyways, but they'll typically cut something else off. Just depends on the chipset because your CPU's PCI-e lanes are for the top PCI-e x16 slot, Ethernet, built-in Wi-Fi if you have it, USB, etc., and then the chipset is for every slot beneath the top PCI-e x16 slot. That's why they're usually PCI-e 3.0 (on B550) or even PCI-e 2.0 (on B450) lol. Just like when you stick an M.2 NVME card in the bottom slot. You have a choice to either lose S-ATA ports 5/6 OR have it run at x2 instead of x4 and have S-ATA 5/6 run at half bandwidth. It's typically the benefit of the x470 or x570 chipsets. You are likely to get a few more PCI-e lanes out of those AND likely to have a higher PCI-e version. But I can't complain, my Asus STRIX B550-F Gaming Wi-Fi II is absolutely LOADED with PCI-e cards and so many USB peripherals lol. And since it's B550 with a Zen 3 5900x, I have PCI-e 4.0 up top on my GPU and M.2 NVME. Eh, whatever, no one reads comments.
There is an extension for the sort. It's a PCI-E Extension cable. I have a 7600 XT that covers the same slot. So I just bought one of those and it fits my old audio card (I know, but the sound quality is just better.)
@@kreuner11Nowadays it's not a big difference anymore in sound quality but you get some extra features, more power and usually a 6.35mm Audio port for Hi-Fi Headphones.
I have known this since day one, because I have built computers for folks with expansion cards on motherboards that did not have convenient 1x slots. In fact as I type this, I have my wireless/blue tooth card in the full size PCI-E slot on my motherboard, because the 1x slot is literally covered up by the GPU cooler.
Well not many manufacturers also made sound cards anymore, pcie one anyway, the usb dac market is quite tge opposite, flooding with, thankfully, mostly, good stuff
@@jordanmntungwa3311might also want to invest into di box, pcie soundcard does still have a market on the prosumer audio, but mostly more expensive than usb interface and it's i/o is also mostly line level and not instrument level
I can tell the difference between my sound card and MB audio, easily! MB audio has gotten better but it's still nowhere near a good sound card paired with good quality speakers. The bass is especially crisper and deeper. Explosions in games and movies sound more realistic on the sound card.
Slots are downrated compatible, Can Stick 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x into a 16x 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x into a 8x 1x, 2x, 4x into a 4x 1x, 2x into a 2x 1x into a 1x If all slots are covered, and you still have case mounts, you can get a riser cable to offset the slot.
This is so far the most information I've ever got in a short. I never knew the use case of those ports in a Motherboard I was firmly convinced i spent a good amount on a motherboard for future proofing with built in Wifi and Type-c but this video changes my views and seriously helpful for a cheap pc build because i don't want to spend too much on a motherboard but i know the importance of a good motherboard
@user-pk7je6wu1y To be fair, modern motherboards are like, the descendants of half of century of improvements and engineering 💀. Some of the nicer overclock ones are actually really wild with all they come with lol.
@@abd-al-Muhimen It's actually beyond me how they route most of these cheaper boards particularly the typical micro ones on only 4 layers, and have it all still work including RAM signal integrity. Back in the day we used to have a lot more layers on functionally much simpler mainboards. There's a see through section on the mainboard with numbers 1-4 or 1-6 somewhere near an edge or corner which is a layer witness, so you can count the layers yourself.
Usb dongel have a big problem. It use the cpu de /en code the data So the ping and response time go up a lot. So always go for a hardware solution and not a usb software .
It CAN also work in the reverse too, BUT you need the motherboard to be built with a special port, that does not have a back side (or physically break away the back side, without destroying the motherboard, NOT recommended), so the card can be allowed to extend out of the port. In both situations the data speed is obviously limited to whichever is the shortest component, but it still works.
If the GPU covers all of the slots, a USB dongle is not the only option. Literally on the same Reddit post, everyone is saying you can just buy a 1x PCIE riser
My GPU covered all of them, but I just fit a 90° angle riser in there and mounted the Wi-Fi card such that its antennas poke through the front of the case. I have a cheap black plastic case that looks allright according to me. And don't even ask why I have 7 USB ports in the front (4 USB 2, 3 USB 3.0)
you can easily use your head and think of many reasons why thats not always a solution a simple one is, pc far from router and dont want no ugly cable/cant put through wall
@@shadeshotTV Sorry but I have cables and I've never seen an issue with it. I prefer to have cables and a stable and powerful connexion rather than no cables and a jankie one.
@@saberruntv some dont want 1-200ft of cable running through high traffic areas in their home, some dont want cables running up/down/across stairs, some cant run cables through walls because of leasing/renting, pretty simple and common sense reasons for example my room is right infront of the stairs, i have 2 ethernet cables running across my doorway, if i trip over them i fall straight down the stairs, im the only person walking here so im fine with it or we discard 2 perfectly fine cables and get much longer ones to route on the trim also, how do you manage to get jankie wifi nowadays? if i went on amazon and got some random products i would have to purposefully spend more in order to get a less than perfect experience this is coming from someone who has a 48port +4 spfp+ switch, running 10Gb on a server and my pc, and have a bare minimum router in a 2 story house, wifi and wired are identical experiences everywhere in the house, even for doing stuff on my server the only difference is my pc can do faster speeds, but everyone else its the exact same as wired/wifi
@@shadeshotTV You don't actually need to run an Ethernet cable the whole way. There are adapters to add the Ethernet signal to coax cable (i.e. antenna and cable TV coax) or even the power lines in your walls.
This is more of Asrock thing, also I have it with my old system with EVGA X299 DARK. Rarely I see it on MSI, Gigabyte or Asus. You can use an adapter from key m to key E but IMO it very wastful of the few m.2 key m these already have.
He doesn't mention if you use the bottom PCI-E x16 slot and you also use the top PCI-E slot with a graphic card most motherboard's will run your gpu at 8x not 16x. Thank me later
you can also do vice versa, you can put your gpu in that x1 slot if you cut off the border, PCI-Express was made that way so it's backwards and forwards compatible it won't exactly be great but it will be usable (that's also what mining rigs do, since they don't need the bandwidth)
Had this for a second graphics card when they didn't support three Displays. On a later setup, I cut the GPU to x1 or x2. Was the easy way and I didn't want to cut the slot again.
I don’t trust usb dongle’s anymore. I had 3 in one year, and they all failed. 1st one worked well until it got hot, 2nd one fried itself. And the last one was so slow it was like using dial-up.
@@upseguest Most people's dial up back in the day only went 28-56kbps, even some were 14kbps. I'm talking AOL days when you'd actually hear your computer dial into a number, hence the name "dial up".
You’d think it was self explanatory given the standard fitment of the slots. If they wanted it specifically for that one slot, they’d change the design entirely There was a reason why it was imperative for me to shop for a full sized slot on an MATX motherboard because I understood the capabilities. ASUS TUF B550 Wifi Plus was my motherboard of choice (pre-controversy)
Для каких идиотов это объяснение... Типа прикиньте, вы в любой порт PCI подключить можете устройства... Ничего против не имею по отношению к автору, но люди какие же вы смешные. Этот мир с каждым днем кажется все тупее и тупее.
Always go with ethernet cable. Even if the modem/router is in another room. Far more stable connection and since you get your connection directly from the cable, you can always use your connection speed to the fullest. For example if you downloading large files, another devices with wifi connection won't slow your download speed. Instead their connection speed will slow down.
i only use the usb dongole bc thay cheap and fast and says at least 3 yeass or so unless i brake it. idk the price out of my contry but allmost any usb dongole cos about min:7.5$usd max:30$usd (im not amircan the usd is for refrens)
Depends on the dongel and the connector. Suppose you purchase a cheap low bandwith dongle it won't help What more people do buy a good dongle then put that in a low bandwith USB type A 2.0 Always put dongel in a USB type A 3.2 or anything above 3.0 gen 2 or 3 . It's still not as fast compered to pcie or inbuilt options but reliable. Where's also type C and Thunderbolt dongels . Thunderbolt 4 was 40 Gbps speed will it work faster maybe yes never tried. Maybe I gues not
You could have a problem with that, I did it but when I wanted to have another nvme drive the wifi card was taking all the 16 pcie lines instead of just the amount needed, not having enough for the drive
I've done a similar thing other way around. 16X GPU, 8X PCI-E port. To do that, I've removed plastic at the right-most edge of the slot, thus removing obstruction. The GPU worked OK at 8X speed. Main concern is about the slot's ability to hold cards after losing structural integrity. It was a trash computer so I didn't really care about messing it up.
This is part of the reason I went with a Dark Hero vs the normal Hero motherboard for my new PC haha whoops! Idk i'm fine with it though because I want it to look clean and i think it looks a lil silly in the full size one
Found out about this when my retarded stupid ass didn't notice the plastic cover on my second PCI slot. For those wondering what a plastic cover for a PCI slot looks like, don't worry I didn't know these existed as well, but it appears the biggest electronic seller in my country decided it's needed to cover certain ports and connectors with these plastic covers (which are supposed to be biodegradable) I mean it COULD happen that during shipping some slots/connectors/ports could get damaged, but they chose for whatever reason a color that looked like it was a design of the motherboard (and yes I could've just see there's only one BIG PCI instead of 2 but hey, I was after 4th night shift finally getting my upgraded hunk of metal which I could not afford for 4-5 years so I was super hyped to finally get that stuff runnin' :^)
This is true. Although it should be noted that theres a reason why cards are different sizes. The more pins, the more data you can transfer per second. So while this does work, you would be using a fast slot for a slow card. if you had say a 10 GB ethernet card, you might want to put that in the longer slot(s)
and if you have to buy a USB wifi, then buy a new motherboard that either has WiFi or is larger with more PCIe slots. USB WiFi is absolute garbage, no matter how much you spend, you will NEVER find a good one. PCIe WiFi, or built-in WiFi on the board or go home.
WiFi mesh networks also work! I bought most of my pc used ( 5800x, 32gb ram, about 1tb of storage, a corsair hs80, a Logitech g502 hero, and an evga keyboard for $300, yea I had my own gpu, a 7900xt I got for $700 brand new) it was a great deal, but the mobo doesn’t have WiFi, NO PROBLEM! I used the old Google WiFi’s I had as a way to plug in an Ethernet cable without needing to run a cord across my whole house, and it works great!
I just installed a wifi card into my friends pc and it was a bit of a tight fit since he had a matx board and the gpu just barely left enough room for the card
Depending if your gpu covers all the slots that you need to use you can always get an extension. My gpu covers my motherboards sata ports so I had to get a pcie to sata card to compensate. When I put it in it was too close to my gpu for comfort and really blocked the gpu fan. I grabbed up a nice extension on Aliexpress that plugged into the pcie and laid so flat that you could run the cable under a gpu fan shroud if you needed to. In my case I just ran it away from the gpu, plugged in the sata card, and just mounted it in the case. Worked pefectly and I had no change in speeds with the extension.
The issue is less the gpu covering the slots, it's more the card is going to block some of your gpu's cooling. I had this issue with a capture card. Increased my gpu temps by like 10 when I put it in there, not even mentioning how dang hot the capture card was getting.
USB dongle is a horrible advice. PCIe extensions exist and can be used in some build Ive made a build with a mini ATX mb and a big GPU and that's what I used. Way better than using a USB wifi stick. And the extension comes cheap I'm not sure what I paid but I think it was around 7/10$ Just do your research before and do the math For me it was better to use it this way instead of buying a Mb with wifi integrated.. but it all depends on many factors
I would use Ethernet if my router werent permanently in the living room when my pc is in my room. Running a cable would be too inconvenient compared to using my motherboards built in wifi. Its 5g and i get 230mbps which is great. I game and stream and its perfectly fine. I even torrent with a VPN and my speeds are awesome even on wifi
Most modern motherboards use an M.2 slot for their WiFi these days (that come with WiFi). And it's typically away from the PCIe slots for this exact reason. They also utilize M.2 so that you can replace them in the future with a future wifi card like WiFi 7.
The opposite is also true. If you're trying to use a x4 PCIe card but you only have an PCIe x1 slot on the mobo and it won't fit, find some snipers and cut out the plastic at the end of the PCIe slot, and fit it in. It WILL work but it will only use one PCIe lane so bandwidth will be cut down. Also this voids warranties too.
I got a crap ton of pcie cards cus of the work i do. All pci slots in my board is filled and the one under the gpu is connected to a 1x extension & then to a 1gbe network card that sits on the slot above the gpu with it's small form factor bracket installed so that the riser cable can be connected to the network card😂. Before that for 4yrs i had the network card without the bracket just touching the fan shroud of the gpu and occasionally hitting the fan blades.
"Issue mostly happens on mATX boards", "just put it into the second full size pci-e slot". I am wondering if he ever had the chance to see an mATX board with two full size PCI-E slots...
