What is the strangest PCIe expansion card you have seen?

[Billy Pilgrim]

What is the strangest PCIe expansion card you have seen?

[Fasauceome]

I actually own it, it's a PCIe USB 3.0 + eSATA expansion card. Who would need that, ever? Me, apparently.

[Smeltie]

pcie tv tuner... dont ask why or how or what brand
because i dont remember, a friend has it somewhere

[flibberdipper]

These lads came stock in my OptiPlex 7010 so...

 

[WereCat]

[DexterSmythe]

48 minutes ago, Martijn Klerks said:

pcie tv tuner... dont ask why or how or what brand
because i dont remember, a friend has it somewhere

I have one too. I use it to record shows to my Plex server OTA.

[Ithanul]

44 minutes ago, flibberdipper said:

These lads came stock in my OptiPlex 7010 so...

 

Nice, a parrallel and a serial card.

Where I work, we still require a parrallel card for the system.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Yes, it's a PCI Express card that has nothing more than capacitors on it. It was actually listed on NewEgg. It also cost about $80. What does it do? It's a "video signal filter."

[Billy Pilgrim]

14 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Yes, it's a PCI Express card that has nothing more than capacitors on it. It was actually listed on NewEgg. It also cost about $80. What does it do? It's a "video signal filter."

Look at the reviews. They are quite funny.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

2 hours ago, fasauceome said:

I actually own it, it's a PCIe USB 3.0 + eSATA expansion card. Who would need that, ever? Me, apparently.

Link? I actually need to put eSATA in a machine so that might be useful

25 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Yes, it's a PCI Express card that has nothing more than capacitors on it. It was actually listed on NewEgg. It also cost about $80. What does it do? It's a "video signal filter."

*comic sans intensifies*

[Fasauceome]

2 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Link? I actually need to put eSATA in a machine so that might be useful

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAC5C70U1560&ignorebbr=1&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleMKP-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleMKP-PC-_-pla-Buy+Best-_-Add-On+Cards-_-9SIAC5C70U1560&gclid=CjwKCAiA9efgBRAYEiwAUT-jtCHsiEff1sMCOzBmQQABCxue3VBPjItLGl7YSBTA5HDC41nBGZ9rkRoCnXcQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I got this one because it also has an internal header, so it's actually super useful for expansion. I have that internal header attached to a USB 3.0 to SATA reader on the front of my PC, because my USB 3.0 from my motherboard was already taken up by the case.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAC5C70U1560&ignorebbr=1&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleMKP-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleMKP-PC-_-pla-Buy+Best-_-Add-On+Cards-_-9SIAC5C70U1560&gclid=CjwKCAiA9efgBRAYEiwAUT-jtCHsiEff1sMCOzBmQQABCxue3VBPjItLGl7YSBTA5HDC41nBGZ9rkRoCnXcQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I got this one because it also has an internal header, so it's actually super useful for expansion. I have that internal header attached to a USB 3.0 to SATA reader on the front of my PC, because my USB 3.0 from my motherboard was already taken up by the case.

Neat, thanks.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, flibberdipper said:

These lads came stock in my OptiPlex 7010 so...

 

 

What picture did you take that with? It looks pretty good

[flibberdipper]

47 minutes ago, hiitswilliam said:

What picture did you take that with? It looks pretty good

LG Aristo. When you zoom in a bit it looks pretty damn crusty but I suppose squished down a bit it does look rather nice because of that 10:30AM Michigan sun.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, flibberdipper said:

LG Aristo. When you zoom in a bit it looks pretty damn crusty but I suppose squished down a bit it does look rather nice because of that 10:30AM Michigan sun.

Man, I wish it were that sunny here. You love the winter until you hate it. 

[flibberdipper]

28 minutes ago, hiitswilliam said:

Man, I wish it were that sunny here. You love the winter until you hate it. 

Michigan seems to have forgotten how to winter over the past 5 years. We had more snow in November (which wasn't much) than we have this month.

 

obligatory "global warming isnt real reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

[Tristerin]

8 hours ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Neat, thanks.

I think that's E-sata pass-through -- still takes up a sata port to use the rear expanded e-sata connection

[SenKa]

10 hours ago, James Evens said:

watercooled FPGA card with DDR-4 dimm slots: https://www.bittware.com/fpga/xupvvp/

Your link doesnt work, I wish I could see it

[mariushm]

The weirdest for me would be those proprietary cards that just add an extra DVI or some other display connector, without an extra video card (just connecting the card through pci-e slot  to the integrated graphics)

I see those as basically evil, greed, as were mostly just a way for OEMs to justify charging 10-20$ more for dual monitor support or some other such marketing point, when they could have put the actual display output on the IO shield on the motherboard in the first place.

 

At least all the cards above (except the filtering only card) have some purpose, do something useful.

 

[SenKa]

12 hours ago, James Evens said:

Strange. Now it works again (?). If not just copy paste it.

Had to copy+paste. Clicking the hyperlink just opens another tab on this thread, for some reason. That thing looks freaking awesome

[Radium_Angel]

Frame grabber

[Nicnac]

20 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Frame grabber

BNC connectors  

[Radium_Angel]

Now to be fair to the original question, I'm going with "off the shelf" hardware I've seen. I have scientific instrumentation that comes with bespoke cards that would blow your mind, but it's not something you can buy unless you drop 7 figures to get the instrumentation along with it.

[FIThrowaway2738]

Apogee Symphony 64 AD/DA card, to connect to converter for audio recording

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Phas3L0ck]

Intel QuickAssist 8960 PCIe 100Gbps Cryptographic Hardware Acceleration Adapter. Might not be much to look at, but isn't that kind of the point if it has massive processing power like it advertises? Nothing says how to use it, but there's plenty on what it can be used for.