What are PCIe x1 Slots Used For? | 8 PCIe Devices for x1 Slots

I explain in this video what devices PCIe x1 slots are used for on a motherboard. I also attempt to explain what PCIe lanes are and what PCIe version has to do with the PCIe x1 slot.

All in the effort to make sure you get a good grasp of the what an x1 slot is.

Read in Detail What PCIe x1 Slots are Used For:

An x1 slot is basically the smallest PCIe slot on a motherboard that is used to add low demanding add-in cards such as WiFi Cards, Network Cards etc.

The number "1" after the letter "x" denotes the amount of PCIe lanes the slot has. As such it has the lowest throughput (or transfer rate) of all the PCIe slots out there.

If you are someone who is a DIY PC builder, then understanding what PCIe x1 slot and what PCIe lanes are is a very important consideration so that you can install various hardware components in the right slots.

Inspired by Linus Tech Tips, Game Nexus, Paul's Hardware, JayzTwoCents, Techquickie.

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Chapters:
[0:00] - Introduction
[0:47] - Form Factor and x1 Slots
[1:32] - What is PCIe x1 Slot?
[3:00] - What is PCIe Version?
[4:05] - Uses of PCIe x1 Slot
[7:43] - Outro

[misterdavis]

No yelling, goofy faces or loud annoying music or effects. Excellent

[Vatharian]

Other things I have put into PCIe x1 slot:
- M.2 drive in a vertical slot. It limits bandwidth, but it's fine for light use. As a bonus, if you use 2230 size drive it fits in 1U rack case and most ITX-sized or thin client sized cases.
- Serial and parallel port adapters. They are still used widely for industrial applications, and in engineering
- Firewire card. It was used for debugging Windows kernel drivers. You can use USB 3.0 for this, now.
- TV Tuner / capture card. To my surprise they are still manufactured.
- Oscilloscope interface card - that's clearly very industrial use case, along with other signal analysers
- M.2 carrier board with x1 to x4 lane for one nvme drive, and two other AHCI M.2 drives, located on the other side of PCB, with SATA connectors on the edge to connect to motherboard
- 2.5" HDD carrier, which required only SATA connector to the board, and pulled power from PCIe slot. Very clean solution.
- two-drive 2.5" HDD carrier, which had on-board SATA controller, therefore requireing no cables at all
- SAS Expander. It's basically port multiplier for SAS - has input and output ports, it takes power from PCIe and presents small device for monitoring and management to host system. Btw SATA can also be multiplied, one SATA port can address 5 disks.
- 16-camera analog monitoring system, with 16 BNC and RS-485 connectors for grabbing and controlling PTZ on remote cameras. And, yes, x1 port PCIe 2.0. 500 MB/s is excessively enough for 16 VGA streams, especially already encoded to MPEG-2.
- 4G LTE card. Kind of same as with WiFi (also requires separate USB cable), but also has SIM card slot. Technically you can use any WiFi carrier card, and and interposer with a SIM slot.
- A fan. Literally a GPU-sized PCB with two slim fans cleverly mounted on it, blowing upwards through PCB into card above it or CPU area, took power from PCIe slot.
- card reader. Technically it was front panel-mounted, but there was teeny-tiny x1 PCIe "card" with microscopic USB controller on it, and ribbon cable leading to the front panel bay, which housed actual card slots. It had literally everything, from Sony's MagicStick, RS-MMC, SDXC and microSDXC, CF I/II (including Microdrive!), CFast, XD, and more, and had decent speeds.
- AGEIA PhysX card. Dell has PCIe version of it.

I will always scoff at motherboard manufacturers that leave empty places where x1 slots could be, and not leaving their backs open, so x4 or longer card could be inserted.

[SIeipner]

Great and informative video. I just wanted to add just a few bits of additional information. In a SLI/Crossfire motherboard, The top PCI-E 16x slot closest to the CPU has 16 lanes, the other blue 16x slot further below (farther away from the CPU) is a 16x PCI-E slot with only 8 lanes. You can visually see this, where you can see the pins stops in the middle and the rest of the slot is just plastic. Those 8 lanes from that slot connects directly to the last 8 lanes of the top PCI-E 16x slot. So if you plug anything into this slot, even a 1x PCI-E device, than the top 16x slot will be downgraded from 16 lanes to 8 lanes in the BIOS, since they can't both use those lanes at the same time. So If you have a high end GPU in the top 16x slot, I highly recommend you don't plug anything into the other 16x slot below unless you absolutely have to. In this video, the bottom 16x slot is just a 4x PCI-E that connects to the chipset, so it won't downgrade the 16x to 8x.

[DarkpawTheWolf]

Great video for an intro to this slot. Although rare, there are also graphics cards available in x1. I have an Nvidia NVS-300 which has dual DVI output using only an x1 slot. This is useful in PCs where your want another 'low use' monitor to be used for your desktop, but to not take graphics RAM from your primary card.

[brucejoseph]

You can also plug an x1 x2 x4 or x8 card into an x16 slot. I have an x1 wifi card plugged into the x16 slot on my mini itx board.

[james_day]

Thank you so much for this video, ngl, i had no idea what that slot was even for and I was hunting everywhere for a video like this one, very detailed and you made it very easy to understand for a new pc user (like me) to catch on quickly, thank you 😊

[kronos]

I've been building PC's for a long time and I still learned a lot from this presentation. Excellent job.

[robertcaron]

Thank you for explaining this very well, I was having a hard time understanding every other video that I tried finding on this topic

[datpudding]

Although not having learned anything new, I think this video is a perfect starting point for further research

[ivosarak]

You did not cover all cases here. Total amount of available number of PCIe lanes and the source of the PCIe capabilities - some of it is chipset based and some of it CPU based. Integrated devices get some lanes to themselves as well. Also, not only PCIe splitting, but the PCIe switching is a thing as well.

[kilroy]

The most interesting thing I learned is that you can plug an x1 card into an x16 slot, if you have trouble finding room among your other cards.

[bobingabout]

My PC might be a bit on the older side, but it had 2 PCI slots, a PCIe x16 slot, an x16 sized x8 slot, an x16 sized x4 slot, and 2 x1 slots.
I have the graphics card in the x16 slot (Obviously), a TV Tuner/Video capture card in the 1st x1 slot, a WiFi card in the 2nd 1x slot, and an NVMe SSD in the x4 slot.
Other devices I've had plugged into the computer, but not currently attached include a SATA card, USB 3 card and a Parallel/Serial port card.

[benjaminthomas]

Never had much tech savvy so I learnt a ton from this simple and easy to grasp explanation. Great video, now I understand a motherboard better. Thanks and God bless

[dtaylor]

Excellent video, straight to the point without all the bells and whistles and constant requests to subscribe, wish they were all made like this. I'm going to be putting a new PC together soon so have subscribed keep up the good work

[Jules_Diplopia]

Thank you for explaining clearly why I don't need extra PCIe slots. Makes my life so much easier.

[realkliment]

Clear tutorial. Easy explanations. Good visuals. I came here to learn if I can use a PCIe X1 to connect more HDDs and if the pcie lane can allow the speeds to read them at the same time. Although I didn't find an answer to my question, I watched the whole video. Nicely made!

[good_vibes_now]

Hello! I'm in hardware busniess since edo ram memories are used in computers. As a hoby i start even earlier from the time OricNova64 (Yugoslavian computer) then as everybody these days, Commodore, Atarti, Amiga500 and when i get my first Pc.. Pc286 .. what day.. i will remmeber till i die.. Ok sorry for all of these what i write.. I just want to point that I never had a chanche to see better video than this one.. Everything is more than a perfect. .All facts are true 100% and this guy descibing alll of this more than a perfect.. Well done guys.. keep with good content .. bravo

[PoeLemic]

Very good coverage. Thank you. I needed a refresher course on this topic. Excellent work. Subbed.

[Promis_QS_Panda]

Thank you so much, i have been looking at what upgrades I can do to my PC and you have given me clarity on the subject. I will be adding a Capture card and USB ports for my devices!

[xcoder]

Maybe I missed that in the video but it's worth to mention that a PCIe x1 card can work in any PCIe slot, no matter how many lanes that slot has. The other lanes will then just go unused, as the card will still only use one of the lanes the slot offers.

The whole idea of PCIe is that a motherboard has N data lanes, each capable of transferring data at a certain speed, yet if there is an expansion card that requires more speed than a single lane can offer, it can combine multiple physical lanes to a single virtual lane and thus increase the amount of data it can transfer a second by transferring that data in parallel via multiple lanes. In theory any card can work an any slot. A PCIe x1 card can work in a PCIe x16 slot (15 lanes will then go unused) and a PCIe x16 card can work in a PCIe x1 slot but then it only has one lane available and will only operate at 1/16th of the speed it usually operates at and has been designed for.

Since cards do not require more lanes for no reason, a PCIe x16 card will often only fit into a x16 slot, which is an artificial limitation solely enforced by the slot design of the motherboard manufacturer. Some mother boards have PCIe x1 slots that are open at the end, in which case a PCIe x16 card will fit into them. A PCIe x1 card on the other hand will always physically fit into a PCIe x16 slot. x1 and x16 are only the extremes, there's also x4 and x8 but those are rare, since most cards either require less bandwidth than even x1 can offer or they require as much bandwidth as the system can offer in total and that's always x16.

The rules are: A card with a lower x-number will always fit into a slot of higher x-number and operate normally in that slot. A card with a higher x-number might fit into a slot with a lower x-number, but that depends on the motherboard and if the card will operate correctly depends on how well it can operate when it doesn't receive the full bandwidth it has been designed for. The PCIe standard requires that a PCIe x16 card to work with just one lane, it must not refuse operation, but it does not require that card to offer the same feature set or operate in a meaningful way. E.g. a graphics adapter may operate in a x1 slot but due to the limited bandwidth, refuse to offer certain features that simply would not make any sense given the available bandwidth, up to the point where the card is pretty much useless for any purpose.