Why does this MSI Intel 6-7th GEN gaming motherboard have 2 PCI ports??

[Kepslok]

So either i'm missing something or i haven't played around with newer hardware too much (yes for poor me i'd consider even this newer hardware) but this gaming motherboard (MSI B250 GAMING PRO CARBON) that supports Intel 6-7th gen cpu's seem to have 2 regular PCI ports?? Can someone explain to me why they would put such old ports on such a modern motherboard especially since it's aimed towards gaming? The only reason i can think of that anyone would want such an old port is for example for certain specialized hardware that's for example required to operate some older hardware/machinery. But then why put the port on a gaming motherboard, let alone 2 of them?? The reason why they would do this is beyond me so i hope someone can talk some sense into this!

 

[Grabhanem]

I'd guess they were running low on PCIe lanes from the chipset and wanted something cheap to fill the space. PCI doesn't require a separate lane for each slot, so it's very cheap to implement.

[Levent]

To be completely honest, I am more bothered by having 4 angled SATA ports and 2 upright ones in that picture. PCI is still used by some, to date, plus its not a Z series board so there is most likely some market for it.

[Skiiwee29]

<-- Moved to CPUs, Motherboards, and Memory -->

[BondiBlue]

They can still be pretty useful for certain applications. There are plenty of very nice PCI only sound cards available, and they'd be useful to add an IDE controller for someone who needs to access old drives regularly, or perhaps something like a Zip drive. Or they were just being cheap and wanted something easy to fill the space. 

[Dedayog]

Don't sound cards and wifi cards use PCI slots?

[jaslion]

3 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Don't sound cards and wifi cards use PCI slots?

Only over a decade old ones still do.

[Dedayog]

4 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Only over a decade old ones still do.

Guess I'm confusing PCIe and PCI then.  For some reason I thought the large slots are PCIe and the small ones are PCI.

[Kepslok]

To make it even a little more confusing to me, it seems that the B250 chipset does not support PCI (according to Intel's website). So what does that mean? They've placed chip on the board just to support those PCI slots or something? Also those PCI slots aren't even listed on the specifications list on MSI's own website

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

2 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Guess I'm confusing PCIe and PCI then.  For some reason I thought the large slots are PCIe and the small ones are PCI.

In the picture there are:

 

2X PCIe x16 slots (the longest, one is silver)

2X PCI slots (slightly shorter)

2X PCIe x1 slots (short)

[jaslion]

22 minutes ago, Kepslok said:

To make it even a little more confusing to me, it seems that the B250 chipset does not support PCI (according to Intel's website). So what does that mean? They've placed chip on the board just to support those PCI slots or something? Also those PCI slots aren't even listed on the specifications list on MSI's own website

I know they do that for old machinery on entry level chipset boards but why it's on a gaming one is beyond me.

[Beerzerker]

It adds compatability so you aren't limited to just PCI-E slot pieces.
If you happen to have an older PCI slot device such as a sound card it will work. The board I've got in this machine (X470 Tachi Ultimate) has at least one and I am using it for my sound card.

[mariushm]

There were some decent PCI sound cards in the past.

Some people may want PCI slots for retro gaming, for example to add a Voodoo2 or something like that as pass through video card.

 

But all this aside, don't rule out the possibility MSI may reuse the pcb layout (and just change the heatsinks and maybe some printed text on the board) for "business" class boards - all the "gaming branding" is pretty much on the heatsinks and io shield ... so they could easily just change those / replace those with more basic heatsinks and they're done. So presence of pci was just a side effect of cost saving, reusing circuit board design.

 

All pci slots share a 133 MB/s bus (32 bit x 33 mhz) so there's either pci support in the chipset (unlikely) or there's a pci-e x1 to pci chip. 

 

[Kepslok]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

There were some decent PCI sound cards in the past.

Some people may want PCI slots for retro gaming, for example to add a Voodoo2 or something like that as pass through video card.

 

But all this aside, don't rule out the possibility MSI may reuse the pcb layout (and just change the heatsinks and maybe some printed text on the board) for "business" class boards - all the "gaming branding" is pretty much on the heatsinks and io shield ... so they could easily just change those / replace those with more basic heatsinks and they're done. So presence of pci was just a side effect of cost saving, reusing circuit board design.

 

All pci slots share a 133 MB/s bus (32 bit x 33 mhz) so there's either pci support in the chipset (unlikely) or there's a pci-e x1 to pci chip. 

 

The thought that they'd use the same board layout for multiple target use cases did cross my mind, and it does seem like the most plausible reason to me as well now.