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XPS 8500, add PCIe x1 card?
I have a XPS 8500 Special Edition (config details at the link) with SATA ports and PCI-E slots used as described above. Can I add PCIe x1 card to XPS 8500 with all SATA ports, PCIe x16, & mSATA slot already occupied without problems? I would like to add this 4 Port SATA III NON-RAID PCI-e 2.0 x1 Card to an open PCIe x1 slot. Would this cause anything else to stop working due to power, or bus bandwidth limitations? Just wondering, because I know some motherboards deactivate various ports or features depending on which or how many PCIe slots are in use.
speedstep
9 Legend
9 Legend
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47K Posts
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October 11th, 2019 18:00
PCI-E 2.0 is line coded 8b/10b and PCI-E bus 3.0 is line coded 128b/130b
so this is not ever working due to line code and bus speed issues.
This incompatibility was known as early as 2009.
https://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/guide/pci-express3-phy-implementation-considerations-idf2009-presentation.pdf
any storage card that does not have whql drivers and certificate from microsoft WILL NOT LOAD with secure boot on.
Techgee
2 Intern
2 Intern
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590 Posts
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October 12th, 2019 03:00
It should be fine.
The PCIe specs for power in a x1 slot are pretty specific and card designers should have stayed within that (around 10W). The heatsink on the card indicates to me most of the card's power is probably consumed by the Marvell 88SE9215 controller. I don't see any power usage specs for the card, but specs for the controller have it's power at 1W, well below 10W. PCIe lane allocation on 8500 is also likely fixed/unchanging with its straightforward 16x and (3) 1x slots.
Practical performance with SSDs will probably be in the 330 MB/s range assuming x1 slot is PCIe 2. Any data movement with multiple drives attached to the card will share the limited bandwidth. If you're attaching spinning HDs to it you probably won't see any performance bottleneck due to the card.
According to description the card is bootable (although I think only with Legacy BIOS, and not UEFI only), but the one SATA III 6G native port or mSATA port on the 8500 is faster. (I think 8500 natively has (1) 6G SATA port and (3) 3G ports, plus a 6G mSATA slot.)