I have a mini itx pc with only one pci-e x16 slot. There is another old style pci slot.
I don't care that much about graphics bandwidth and I'd like to add USB 3.0 support. It's a waste to be using 16 lanes of pci bandwidth for a graphics card I hardly use, and I've found some convenient front panel usb 3.0 cards that only need a 1x pci slot.
I've seen products that allow people to split the pci slots into their seperate channels. They appear to be purely mechanical devices.
I'd like some advice regarding how to get my single x16 slot to support a small graphics card plus a 1x or maybe 4x usb 3.0 card. Some front panel usb 3.0 cards take up very little space at the actual pci-e slot as the cards main board is in the front panel unit.
What would be perfect would be a low profile graphics card that had a pci riser onboard but I doubt this exists and would probably be over priced if it did.
A graphics card that didn't take up the whole x16 slot might be acceptable if it's possible to use the last channel at the same time for a 1x riser or something, don't know if that's allowed.
I will consider acts of physical force on the hardware if deemed necessary to "persuade" it to comply. For example I've seem example of people putting x16 graphics cards into x1 slots just by opening the back of the slot and they still worked.