I don’t really know much about M.2 slots and the different capabilities and how the key type corresponds, so I don’t want to spend money on something that won’t work.

There’s an unused slot on the motherboard marked ‘M.2 PCIe / SATA1’. I believe it’s M-keyed.

Photo of a small Dell motherboard, showing an unused M.2 slot, a standard SATA socket, and another M.2 slot with a networking card in it.

Can it be used with an M+B keyed adapter like this one? Or will it physically fit, but the socket itself isn’t wired to work with an ethernet adapter? Is there a command I can run to figure out the capabilities of that slot?

My plan is to use this machine as an OpenWrt router to replace the shitty Linksys one my ISP supplied, but it would obviously need a second ethernet socket. My home wifi is dealt with by a TP-Link mesh network, so I don’t need it to have wifi and bluetooth. I could use the slot that the networking card is using, but if I can retain those then that would be ideal for any future flexibility I may need.

  • KokeshEnglish
    2·
    6 hours ago

    I’m not entirely sure. I think it probably should. I think the second slot (used for wifi) is a different size than the storage slot and a little slower, but still faster than 1gbps ethernet. Check the port sizes. And verify all I said, I have 3080 for a week and migrated my home server to it, so I didn’t do much inside investigation :)