PCIe 4x in 1x slot

[Benb96]

Hey guys,

 

I want to put 3 of these 

 

http://www.intelligentservers.co.uk/components/hp-nc364t-pci-express-quad-port-gigabit-server-adapter-435508-b21-436431-001/

 

into my server. I'm adding pfSense as a VM and I need multiple ports.

 

The only issue is that I have just realised that my motherboard has 1x PCIe 16x, 1 x PCIe 4x and 2 x PCIe 1x.

 

Those cards are 4x. What do you think I should do?

 

I could have the PCIe 4x card in the 1 x slot, I know it'll run slower, but I was thinking about using that as a standby in NIC Teaming anyway.

 

See below in the image. The top slot is 16x, middle 1x and bottom 4x. The WAN is on the motherboard Ethernet

[zMeul]

you could put a 4x in a 1x slot, but that slot needs to have a cut-out to accept the longer connector

 

[Droidbot]

pci-e is two-way, so you get 4Gbps both ways with a PCI-E 1x slot, it's possible, I guess

[SCHISCHKA]

I don't think so I'm trying to find an intel paper I read some time ago that described a max of two ports on pciex1 but I keep getting dead links

[Benb96]

12 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

I don't think so I'm trying to find an intel paper I read some time ago that described a max of two ports on pciex1 but I keep getting dead links

If I only used 2 of the four ports would that work?

[Benb96]

Just thinking, as pfSense is running on the same physical machine, is there anyway to just use 2 NIC's? As my current setup has the pfSense LAN ports going back into the same physical machine (but different virtual machine).

[SCHISCHKA]

9 minutes ago, Benb96 said:

If I only used 2 of the four ports would that work?

Closest I could find Is this 2 port cart. It says it can only use one port in pciex1. That is not the same card so might require more research http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/product-brief/1000-pt-dual-port-server-adapter-brief.pdf

 

i found this white paper for your card. It mentions it is comparable with pciex1 but does not mention any speed or limitations cdn.cnetcontent.com/d3/d8/d3d88c5f-4ec8-4bb8-8738-d02e3c15894c.pdf

[SCHISCHKA]

Ok I read into it more. That card has two dual port intel chips and this is the intel ark for it https://ark.intel.com/products/20720/Intel-82571EB-Gigabit-Ethernet-Controller

 

it says one two port chip uses pciex1, so I think if you put that quad Nic into a pciex1 only 2 ports will be usable

[Benb96]

8 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

Closest I could find Is this 2 port cart. It says it can only use one port in pciex1. That is not the same card so might require more research http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/product-brief/1000-pt-dual-port-server-adapter-brief.pdf

 

i found this white paper for your card. It mentions it is comparable with pciex1 but does not mention any speed or limitations cdn.cnetcontent.com/d3/d8/d3d88c5f-4ec8-4bb8-8738-d02e3c15894c.pdf

Thanks a lot for the help. I'll talk to my guy at intelligence servers. He knows a lot about pfSense. He may be able to test it for me.

[Benb96]

4 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

Ok I read into it more. That card has two dual port intel chips and this is the intel ark for it https://ark.intel.com/products/20720/Intel-82571EB-Gigabit-Ethernet-Controller

 

it says one two port chip uses pciex1, so I think if you put that quad Nic into a pciex1 only 2 ports will be usable

Do the cards I bought support VLAN tagging and the features in pfSense?

 

I bought the card as it 'Seemed' to be a great deal. Is it a good buy?

[SCHISCHKA]

7 minutes ago, Benb96 said:

Do the cards I bought support VLAN tagging and the features in pfSense?

 

I bought the card as it 'Seemed' to be a great deal. Is it a good buy?

If I am looking at the right intel chip; this paper says vlan tagging is supported http://www.mouser.com/pdfdocs/82571brief.pdf

I don't know what other features pfsense requires. I don't use pfsense in the way you are using it

[Benb96]

2 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

If I am looking at the right intel chip; this paper says vlan tagging is supported http://www.mouser.com/pdfdocs/82571brief.pdf

I don't know what other features pfsense requires. I don't use pfsense in the way you are using it

Thanks. I was looking for the chip specs and it was a to ghost hunt. Just thinking about it, I think I can just use 2 NICs. As I can share a LAN port from pfSense with the host operating system. I'll have a play on my test machine and see what I can come up with

[tt2468]

 

14 hours ago, Benb96 said:

Do the cards I bought support VLAN tagging and the features in pfSense?

 

I bought the card as it 'Seemed' to be a great deal. Is it a good buy?

Yes, it is a good buy. And when running it at x1, all ports will function, but it's possible that you wouldn't hit the max speed, because of limitations with pcie 2.0

[AshleyAshes]

http://www.cyclone.com/products/expansion_backplanes/pcie2-437.php

 

Something like this could break that single 16x slot into four 4x Slots...