I have 2x PCIe X16 and 1x PCIe 1x slots that are not being used. Given that Linux has extensive hardware support, there are probably users with interesting PCI card usages
Aside from traditional usages like network/wireless/bluetooth/sound that can easily be used as USB (or built in advanced sound support in the MOBO), what are your use cases with PCIe?
I have a Hauppage TV tuner card that I use to get OTA TV and record certain shows. I’m pretty sure there are USB solutions, but if I remember, at the time I got this it was one of the only cards that my system supported or whatever caveat I was operating around.
This is a really interesting question. I remember a lot of very niche PCI (not PCIe) cards from the old days.
My current-day boring use-case: Multiple GPUs that have never once been used for gaming. One is an A2000 card that does video transcoding and tone mapping for Jellyfin. The other is an old Quadro card that handles encoding/decoding for my NVR.
I got a card for an extra m.2 drive, and another one with four usb3.1 ports on a separate controller, although i dont use it anymore as much. Haven’t had anything else installed in a while. The last one before that was an audio card I’ve bought around 2010, and it was a huge waste of money
- AMD RX 6750 XT
- MELLANOX CONNECT-3 PRO 10GbE MCX312B-XCCT
- LSI 9211-8i D2607 LSISAS2008 SAS/SATA
my current usage:
on my desktop:
- RX 7900 XTX
- Wifi 6 adapter
- 10Gbit SFP+ NIC
on my proxmox server:
- RTX 3080 (passed through to Debian VM)
- 16 drive HBA (passed through to TrueNAS VM)
- GT 730
- 10Gbit SFP+ NIC
I’ve also used USB PCIe cards to get more USB controllers for picky USB devices like USB capture cards and audio interfaces.
Wifi card. Well, I don’t really use it but it is plugged in.
I have a 6700xt for Linux and an old 2070 that I pass through to a windows guest. I might get a usb card too to pass through but not sure if I have any more space in my mid tower for another pci card.
