[SOLVED] Can i add a PCI expansion to my B450 Tomahawk Motherboard?

[Cybrid]

I recently upgraded to a B450 Tomahawk board and have an old Soundblaster X-fi Fatal1ty Soundcard from my old system that i would love to use, as this is a great soundcard and fitted all my needs, unfortunately this uses a full height PCI connection, is there any way to get this to work with my new board at all, not bother if i need to mod the case in some way to get this to fit. Many Thanks

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

The simple answer is nope. Even if you did get the card to connect using riser cables, you're going to have a nightmare trying to source drivers for the sound card and getting anything productive out of that old card. I had an Audigy 2 ZS and up until Windows Xp, it was funtastic(purposely made typo) but after Windows Vista and 7, things went downhill for older cards from Creative as they lacked driver support. Worse was when you ended up buying an older card that was rebadged to be new and had latter OS support but you didn't get much in terms of an upgrade.

I'd say, leave it.

 

[Cybrid]

Thanks and Such a shame as the card is great and was running fine in my win10 set up, on the old MOBO, on a separate but slightly related note then, i don't suppose you know of a way to increase the audio output directly from the B450, its very quiet on the headphones, i have tried Equalizer APO but that has zero effect on my sound. Cheers

 

[drea.drechsler]

I recently upgraded to a B450 Tomahawk board and have an old Soundblaster X-fi Fatal1ty Soundcard from my old system that i would love to use, as this is a great soundcard and fitted all my needs, unfortunately this uses a full height PCI connection, is there any way to get this to work with my new board at all, not bother if i need to mod the case in some way to get this to fit. Many Thanks

Perhaps something like this. Put the PCie card in a socket, then extend the USB cable and an extension to a molex FDD cable for power outside the case through a removed I/O blanking plate, to the PCi adapter itself. Mount the adapter to a piece of wood or something you fab up.

Yes, that's kludgy and not assured of working if drivers don't exist to support it. It would make for an interesting conversation piece sitting on top of your system though.

If output levels are low it's possibly because you have high-impedance headphones. Get an external DAC with a high impedance output and raise levels. Either that or an external amp.