[SOLVED] Motherboard for small rugged application

[Atterus]

Hello All!

I'm working on finding a rather niche motherboard. The application is going to be putting it on a vehicle that won't have a ton of wiggle room and components would need to be pretty tough. Won't need a ton of processing power, but not "nothing". A mini-ITX or mini-DTX are about as large as the form factor can get, only a little larger would work out. While I don't think the CPU matters a ton, I think intel would be preferred.

So, the largest issue I'm having is either finding a board with 2 PCIe 16x (smaller would work too I guess) slots for 2 PCIe 1x cards, or figuring out how to bifurcate 1 larger PCIe slot into 2 PCIe 1x slots. I'm used to using larger form factors where slots don't really matter so this is pretty new to me.

If anyone has suggestions, I would appreciate it. You all always have pulled through, the last "strange" build is working beautifully. Thanks!

EDIT: I suppose another question is how does one make sure that cards without PCIe clamps don't jiggle loose in their slot? (ie, putting a PCIe x1 into a PCIe x4 without eventually falling out).

 

[hotaru.hino]

What other expansion cards are you adding that requires two PCIe slots?

And cards don't jiggle loose unless they're not screwed onto the chassis. And if they're not screwed onto the chassis, I question what the heck you're doing.

 

[Atterus]

Video capture and a instrument controller are the PCI expansions, but the computer needs to be tiny. Certainly not free floating cards, but worried about the actual cable connection.

 

[egda23]

Some sort of prebuild mini PC with free PCIe slots as the HP EliteDesk 800 G8 Small Form Factor

 

[punkncat]

In a situation like this it almost begs for laptop, which also provides a screen. You don't mention how that aspect would be accomplished.

Video capture can be done a lot of ways. My assumption would be that if you are looking at PCI slot card to do so, that you are also counting on local storage for the feed? Is this also going to be streaming content out and if so, how are you going to do that aspect?

Is this a situation where you could find an emulator or adapter, perhaps to USB C?

In the case of mITX you may be able to use a PCIe splitter. It would depend on the number of lanes your add in cards require. I have not used one to provide additional PCI connections, only things like SATA and USB, so no real idea how well that works.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...the computer needs to be tiny. Certainly not free floating cards, but worried about the actual cable connection.

Honestly, this sounds like an application for a Raspberry PI. There are a lot of video capture projects documented online you could pivot off of.