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Few PCIe slots available in modern PCs, does a PCIe extension chassis work with?

FIRST, the NEW QUESTION with preamble:

  1. Our 6 new process control PCs have few card slots and PCIe are used for SSD and other things as super fast
  2. We must replace all our 7 YO W7 production PCs as time, security and moving parts like cooling fans wear out
  3. Our 6 new PCs, though I called for at least two, preferably adjacent, available PCIe slots in PC *Mfg RFQ what we got was OS C:/ SSD in one PCIe slot and a single port SUNIX RS232 COM Port (COM3) on the only remaining open PCIe slot.
  4. Can pull that RS232 card out and replace but seems we might use a USB-C PCIe extension box
  5. NI has used their custom board bus extension boxes for decades.  Latest is PXI etc.
  6. Does NI have a simple low cost PCIe extension box for X series DAQ cards over USB-C?  Probably not as PXI is the new form factor for PCs that no longer have copious PCIe slots available.

NOW we see issues short Q:

Has anyone successfully used an external PCIe extension chassis, such as Star Tech and other Mfg offer, WITH USB-C (not Thunderbolt 3 as PC not Apple/MAC and TB3 proprietary to Apple) with DAQmx PCIe cards like X series DAQ PCIe-6323?  If so please comment on any issues and performance.  Laptops have zero card slots but newer ones USB-C.  I'm sure some of my developer fiends have done this before.  I do not see that NI has a USB-C PCIe extension box guaranteed compliant with their X series boards.  But if reading, NI engineers, please let me know if you do.  NI Blog supervisors, I know PXI is for this but we don't want to spend over $20 K now. Thank you very much for your responses.  I need to know if LabVIEW and the NI drivers for DAQ X series cards work with an extension chassis.

Community Fiends:  Sorry about the larger font above but my eyes old and fuzzy.  Q must be made with no obvious errors. Many helpful answers found on this board, thank you all and I need to follow up with kudos for previous help.

Background: We have 20 NI PCIe-6323 X series DAQ cards, 2 per production PC and 8 or so PCI-8430/4, /8 and PCIe-8430/4, /8, /16 RS232 cards about for our numerous mass flow controllers.  We cannot use USB2 or 3 UART COM Ports for gas mass flow controllers as many toxic and is very bad to mix oxidizers and reducers improperly...  Well, we 'could' but would be incredibly unwise and I'm a Senior ChE in charge of these safety issues.  NO2, NO or O3 and Ethanol/H2/CH4/other fuels BOOM!!!  USB COM Ports can be anywhere as we know if jacks moved.  Best a fixed RS232 card on motherboard for toxic gas flows.  NI cards have a nice means of ALIAS and all other backup through NI-MAX if the database ever gets corrupted.  Fast and easy to restore system.  Kudos NI and NI-MAX!

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You would already know that NI would not support to get working with aftermarket modifications like the PCIe over USB extenders. 

 

There are few business PCs that specifically come with so many PCIe and PCI slots.

Try these, https://www.onestopsystems.com/desktop-pcie-enclosures - if you are providing them with enough sales, they might lend you some hardware to try and validate your application.

Santhosh
Soliton Technologies

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Try these guys, they sell special PCs with many PCI and PCIe slots
https://www.rampcsystems.com/

Santhosh
Soliton Technologies

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Only two ways to appreciate someone who spent their free time to reply/answer your question - give them Kudos or mark their reply as the answer/solution.

Finding it hard to source NI hardware? Try NI Trading Post
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I know you probably don't have the time but, motherboards with plenty of PCIe slots are readily available.

 

Our Production Test group has a similar requirement and as much as our IT department hates it, since they can no longer find a pre-built computer that meets specifications, they have to build them.

 

It's a comedy of errors every time too. You would think an IT professional would know that motherboards, CPU's and RAM are sold separately, right?... Think again... 

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=== Engineer Ambiguously ===
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Go with the few industrial grade computers that are still available with a useful number of PCIe slots! They may also have problems (any PCI extension out there has a real potential for problems since writing system drivers for them is hard and quite some out there are barely working beyond supporting basic PCI functionality) but in multi-slot motherboard solutions you have at least only one party you have to deal with when something doesn't work. NI-DAQmx and other NI hardware drivers are exercising the PCI bus on a very low level and rather extensively. They will only work if the entire PCI driver stack is properly working together.

 

With those external extenders you will always end up in a situation where the extender manufacturer will be finger pointing at your motherboard manufacturer and claim the BIOS, internal PCI architecture or whatever is wrong. And he may even have a point there, these computers are seldom designed and tested to actually properly support PCI extensions. But there is no chance to get support from your motherboard manufacturer for that, your PCI extender use case is one out of a million and he will simply shrug his shoulders. On the other hand the PCI extension drivers usually are also buggy and may only have been written and tested for a specific set of BIOSes and chipsets. No way for you to know who is at fault (in most cases both sides) but you simply end up between a rock and a hard place and have nowhere to go.

Rolf Kalbermatter
My Blog
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