Dell's propitary SFF PCs

[gregom]

I have a client with a few of these little Dell Optiplex desktop machines but with the notebook cd drives and stuff. I was gonna install some USB-2 PCI cards for them, but nope... After opening it up it has these little half-PCI cards... WTF is that??? This is lame... I don't think I've EVER seen any little half-PCI cards before. Where the hell can I get one for these? Or can I?

I'm very frustrated with Dell and their propiatary crap. They could of at least made a PCI Riser card or something so normal PCI cards could be used.

Any ideas?

 

[Spikesoldier]

if the card's PCB is small enough (which a USB controller card should be) just saw off some of the metal riser, or better yet just unscrew it. it will stay in there.

 

[gregom]

That would work but I want it to mount properly. And the PCI cards I bought are full-size.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: gregom
I have a client with a few of these little Dell Optiplex desktop machines but with the notebook cd drives and stuff. I was gonna install some USB-2 PCI cards for them, but nope... After opening it up it has these little half-PCI cards... WTF is that??? This is lame... I don't think I've EVER seen any little half-PCI cards before. Where the hell can I get one for these? Or can I?

I'm very frustrated with Dell and their propiatary crap. They could of at least made a PCI Riser card or something so normal PCI cards could be used.

Any ideas?

What model Optiplex is it?

 

[araczynski]

we have them in our lab as well, shit*y design, since most manufacturers don't bother making half height anything, and if they do, they charge and arm and a leg.

I'm sure Dell was planning on selling a whole line of half height card (at a nice price premium of course) to fill this void, but seems they said "screw it" to all the people that bought those boxes.

pi*sed me off.

 

[mikecel79]

Just do a search for half height USB 2 card on Google and you'll find about 400 places selling them. At cheap prices too. Half height PCI cards have been around for many many many years now.

Lost of manufacturers are doing this now. It's not propriety at all. Businesses don't want huge towers anymore, they want small PCs that don't take up a lot of room. We use Optiplex GX270s here and we are very happy with them.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Exactly. More than half of the micro-ATX cases I've loked at over the years have half-height slots, and so have many of the non-cube small form factor barebones PCs from people like MSI.

 

[gsellis]

Don't feel picked on. Other SFFs by other mfgrs are the same way.

 

[Carbonadium4]

well, most 1u server uses half height cards, you guys just dont work on them