Quote from: mastergamer on July 17, 2011, 02:59:40 PM

why you should do this?
A new board coast about 70USD with can handle 4 gpus, 40USD for an cpu and another 20 for ram.

Isnt this better (also less power consumption) then buy for about 30-60usd sutch questionable adapters?

thanks for the input, but my question was if people had any luck using this type of set up with old hardware, not the financial implications of it vs a better one. In addition, power is not much of a factor for me at this time (well, it is a factor, but since I operate a motel my guests use far more power on a daily basis than my mining rig would, what with AC units in the rooms, mini fridge, microwaves, tvs lights, etc).

If the PCI -> PCIe adapters do in fact work and work well, there wouldn't be anything stopping me from moving them to another board at a later date.

I currently have the following boards...

Socket A board: 1x AGP + 5 PCI slots ( one PCI slot is blocked by oversized AGP card)
LGA 775 Board: one x16 PCIe, one x1 PCIe, 2 PCI 32bit (one PCI is blocked by oversized x16 card)
LGA 1156 Board: two x16 PCIe (one acts as x4 when in CF mode), two PCIe x1, two PCI 32bit

None of these are very desirable when it comes to a dedicated mining rig, but at the moment they are the hardware that I own.

The LGA1156 system, at this time, has one of my 6870s in it. It is also my Home Theater PC.

The LGA775 I just put a new heat sink/fan on the CPU due to the previous heat sink having a defect and not seating properly. It runs well enough to be a secondary PC upstairs for my girlfriend to use for her hidden picture games. As of right now I have another 6870 in it and am using it for 24/7 mining, to supplement the HTPC when I am gaming on the HTPC.

Which leaves me to the system collecting dust, the Socket A.

Since all of these systems have PCI slots to some degree, and IF those PCI to PCIe adapters were actually usable and viable with relatively no major slowdown to hashrates, I could use the Socket A system as a temporary 24/7 miner until I get around to putting together a better setup, and possiably "pass down" the hardware. 775 would replace Socket A, 1156 would replace 775, and new hardware would go into the HTPC.