Problems Inserting Wireless Card into Mini PCI express port.

Question

I'm new to computer building. I have everything working except my wireless card. In the question section of this Intel wireless card, it says it works with any computer with a mini PCIe slot, which my GIGABYTE GA-B250M-DS3H motherboard has two of. However, I can't figure out how to insert the wireless card into the mini PCIe slot--it seems to be too wide (see picture). Am I missing something obvious here? Are these parts not actually compatible?

Answer 1

You have a Mini-PCIe card (for a laptop).

You're trying to put it in a full size PCIe slot (which looks like a desktop motherboard).

Laptops have mini-PCI slots. Desktops have the full size PCIe slot.

That said, you can still do it, you just need one of these. Search for "Mini-PCIE to PCIE adapter". As you can see they make kinds that have wiring for external antennas.

I've noticed some desktop motherboards have one actual Mini-PCI slots for Bluetooth/wireless cards - but yours may not. So you would need one these adapters.

PCIe has a concept called "lanes" - x1, x4, x8, x16 refer to the number of "lanes" the connector has. More lanes = faster.

Graphics cards typically are x16 (the full length) and the longest slot is intended for those types of cards. Less bandwidth-intensive cards like RAID or Wi-Fi require less PCIe bandwidth and so can use the smaller slots.

The CPU has a limited number of lanes it can support (32, 48) so all slots usually aren't x16 (unless you don't want other peripherals than graphics cards).