New LAN card. PCI vs PCI Express?

[KvWThomas]

Hello,

Thanks everyone for the previous help in upgrading my system. I got a new SSD now and everything is like new. One problem: my ethernet port doest work anymore (tried updating drivers / bootmenu / ...). The onboard wifi chip isn't great and I also tried using an old USB wifi dongle, but both have packetloss. My pc just sits next to the router so a cable is no problem.

Currently I have this amount of space (see attachment)


The GTX 280 feels warm so I was wondering if it would be a bad idea to but a PCI lan card just beneath it. As you can see I also have a PCI express slot available. Thoughts?

This is my motherboard: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5KEWIFIAP/

[Calypto]

Is that the card in the PCI slot on the bottom?

[KvWThomas]

No thats an audio card . Maybe I can stop using that one and swap it for a LAN card. I havent bought one yet

[iRobot]

Putting a LAN card below the 280 would be fine. The 280 was a "hot" generation, though honestly the same can be said about all NVIDIA cards as of late.

Your main concern would be not blocking the airflow into the 280, and from the picture - it looks like a reference version (small fan towards the front) so it should be fine.

[Skaldy]

If one of those slots is going to remain unused, you can put a powered "slot fan" in there if you are concerned about heat. They are quite cheap, and sometimes I rewired them to be quieter & slower at 5v instead of 12v.

[KvWThomas]

Cool I didn't know that existed.

I just bumped into this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/CSL-Interface-E ... op?ie=UTF8
A LAN card with 3 USB 3.0 ports for just 10 euros more..
I see it requires an IDE power cable. I have one running to my DVD reader which I can probably miss.. Or should I try to find a splitter cable?

I disconnected it (bottom right of the picture). I have two PCI E ports free above my GPU aswell .

[Skaldy]

You can get all sorts of Y-cable power splitters to/from IDE/SATA (Molex) and they are just a few euros. The one on the DVD reader is usually the best one to split because it is a rarely used device anyway.

Your existing backplates seem to have holes rather than being solid, and your PC/case designer may have done this intentionally. So, because most slot fans blow out rather than in, you might want to consider what's best for heat removal overall. Generally, you want cold air to come in below and (get forcibly pushed) out above whatever it is that gets hot.

[KvWThomas]

Ok thanks for the information!!

[Aberiu]

Once your vga cooler dies (happens to them all the time - I have a bunch of video cards at home, none of their stock coolers survived by now), you will have to find a replacement, which usually takes at least +1 PCI slot of space under the video card.

[Nardaq_NL]

People, people I see 2 1x PCI-E slots. don't worry about the intake fan of the card

For Gbit LAN, you want to use PCI-E (PCI is 133MB/s so it will easily a bottleneck in the PCI bus)

I recommend a Intel Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter, Broadcom BCM5751 Netxtreme Gigabit PCI Express Ethernet Network Adapter or similar (not the cheap junk )