Had a small spring clean a while ago and come across an ATI HD 2350 which didn't sell on eBay, couldn't resisnt modding it.



This mod is really straightforward, simply chop off the PCB/gold contacts where they're not needed.

My tool of choice is a dremel, a small hacksaw is far more suitable but both do the same job. If you're doing this and using power tools; eye and breathing protection is essential, do it outside or you'll cover the room in dust. Finally remeber to take static precautions, ground yourself and the card.

First of all, mark the area that's going to be chopped off, cut after the seventh pin from the slot key.


Once cut clean the dust off the card and file down the edge




It fits perfectly.


It works!!!

Reminds me of that fake one where someone had cut a PCI-E card to make it fit a PCI slot.

Yeh haxr3 thats what it reminds me of. Does it fit into the slot without the cutting?

An unmodified x16 card would not fit on a normal x1 slot, I've seen some x8 and x4 slots without the right edge which allows any PCI-E card to slot right in. I could have just cut a single mechanical key to clear the edge of the x1 slot but the rest of the connectors prevent the card from being installed on x1 slots with components in the way. For example the picture above with the card installed on a motherboard, the battery sticks out, if the card still had a full x16 connector it wouldn't fit.

Ah ok I got you. Really useful if you wanted lots and lots of screens in a machine will have to remember that one. By the same logic would it work with most cards?

Should work on any PCE-E card.

Silly question maybe....


but if you have a main gfx of nvidia should you have the pcix1 card as ATI as wouldnt 2 nvidia cards of different versions confuse the PC?

If running 2 graphics card, i have always found it better to run nvidia and ati. I have had so many problems running 2 nvidia cards, so many driver conflicts

ah good to know, thank you

whats the quality like?

Picture quality is the same as if it were a x16 card, the only thing that takes a hit going from x16 to x1 is performance. I don't know exactly how much performance it lost but I'd guess hardly any cos the HD 2350 is such a slow card anyway. It would be interesting to find out how much performance a faster card will loose but I won't be cutting up a GTX 280 for obvious reasons .