I’ve been looking for an M.2 key A to PCIe X4 adaptor and haven’t had any luck.
I’m trying to replace the wireless card in a laptop I have laying around with a 2-port gigabit NIC to turn it into a pfsense machine.
Has anybody seen one of those adaptors/know where to get one? I’ve poked around and most of the adaptors seem to be M.2 key M, which I don’t think will work for me.
Can’t help with the adapter but do you know the NIC will work in that port? The BIOS is often very restrictive on devices plugged in that connector if it was shipped with the WiFi adapter in it.
@tkoham thanks for the link but that is for mPCIe not M.2 Key A. That likely won’t even fit in the port.
I honestly don’t. The port looks like it is configured for PCIe + USB per the M.2 (and wireless card) spec. Some of the M.2 Key M adaptors I’ve seen are fairly inexpensive (<$10) so I was willing to roll the dice if I could get an adaptor that cheap.
use a converter.
I think mPCIe only supports PCIe X1 and the m.2 key A spec supports PCIe X2. It would be nice to have the extra lane, as the NIC I am looking at is designed for PCIe X4. Double converting would probably limit me to a single lane.
It may be your only option unfortunately, I haven’t seen key A peripheral converters in ages
Fair enough. I was just looking at the PCIe spec and a single lane probably has enough bandwidth for my needs anyway. At least that is an option. Have you ever done a double conversion like that? I have no idea if something like that would work.
the first conversion is totally electrically compatible, and I’ve used m.2 extension cables before with no problems. Really just depends on how shoddy your adapter is.