I have been wanting a PCIe x1 graphics card for some time so that I can hook up a third monitor to my work PC (motherboard is an intel D915GAG one x16 and one x1 slot)
I didnt like the prices though! So i had pretty much given up when i came across this link:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/249291-30-card
To summarise; The guy cut the pack off a PCIe x1 slot and stuck an x16 card in there.
I tried this last night and it worked :D so very very happy as that's saved me a great deal of frustration.
Now I'm not recommending that anyone actually tried this for the obvous reasons.. I definitely wouldnt be taking a soldering Iron to my GOOD pc.
Where it gets really interesting is that I have another old PC which I use for downloading. I'd like to put my HVR3000 in this PC and use it for Freeview HD but the cpu (Sempron 2600+) wont handle it and the motherboard (ASUS K8S-MX) only has AGP/PCI plus one PCIe X1 slot which (i thought) rules out GPU acceleration.
I tested the card for the intel board in the Asus board (more expendable) so i know it works. Tonight I buy an 8400GS and see if it'll allow me to decode 1080i h.264 with the sempron and over an x1 slot.
