There are plenty of ways to upgrade your painstakingly-assembled battlestation of a PC. On the software front, you could go for Lossless Scaling, MSI Afterburner, and a host of cool utilities. Meanwhile, the hardware side is governed by several neat peripherals, accessories, and components designed to enhance the functionality of your rig. This includes PCIe devices, and I don’t just mean graphics cards.

Contrary to what the average PC builder may believe, the high-speed PCIe interface is compatible with many devices besides GPUs. Network Interface Cards are one such underrated accessory. Ever since I bought my TP-Link TX401 NIC, I’ve relied on it for most of my network needs – to the point where I consider it the best upgrade for my PC. The surprising part? This tiny gizmo cost me less than $75!

4 No more connectivity issues

My PC won’t randomly disconnect from multiplayer lobbies anymore

I’ve been rocking my Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite V1 for years, and it’s still a reliable motherboard for the most part. Well, except for its Ethernet provisions. While I appreciate the support for 2.5G speeds, I can’t say the same about the random connectivity issues plaguing the built-in Ethernet port. And no, it’s not the router, ISP, or Ethernet cable, because I’ve already tested the PC in different networking setups, and the onboard Ethernet port is the only common denominator in each case.

While the random disconnections were few and far between, getting removed from a lobby in the middle of an adrenaline-pumping Helldivers 2 session or a chaotic Lethal Company round is enough to leave me (and my teammates) fuming. But after switching to a dedicated PCIe network card, my connection problem disappeared right away, and I didn’t have to worry about suddenly disappearing in the middle of a multiplayer session.

3 Extra redundancy for my VMs

And it'll come in handy when I turn my PC into a home server

Despite owning a fairly powerful (in my own opinion) home server, I often spin up virtual machines on my PC when I want to run some projects without going through the hassle of booting up my workstation. But as a data hoarder, I usually have backup processes running on my PC, which hog all the bandwidth of my built-in network card.

Slotting an additional NIC solved my bandwidth woes. Since I grabbed a high-speed NIC (and I’ll get to that in a bit), I've used it as the primary card for backup tasks while relegating all virtual machine operations to the built-in Ethernet controller. Hyper-V makes this process especially simple with its virtual switches, but VirtualBox also lets me relegate the onboard Ethernet port to a VM once I enable the Bridged adapter option. I’ll admit that it’s not beneficial to the average user. But for home labbers who use their daily driver as a self-hosting server, a second NIC can help you avert bandwidth issues, especially if you run heavy file transfer operations on your system.

2 Perfect use case for a spare PCIe port

I don’t have to block a USB port with an Ethernet adapter

ATX motherboards may have tons of ports compared to modern laptops, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve already maxed out all the USB connections of my PC… and that includes the extra ports offered by my PCIe-to-USB adapter. The thing is, I usually have most of my peripherals plugged in - ranging from the typical KB+M combo, microphone, webcam, external drives to my drawing tablet, controller, and headset dongle.

A PCIe network card lets me use the spare PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface on my motherboard, without forcing me to make room for a USB-to-Ethernet adapter. Heck, every USB-based Ethernet interface I’ve used in the past resulted in some connectivity issues, while my PCIe NIC has been going strong for months without throwing me in for a loop.

1 Faster Ethernet speeds

The jump from 2.5G to 10GbE is insane

Let me preface this section by adding that a 10 Gigabit connection is overkill for most consumer setups. So long as your daily driver can transfer data at 2.5G speeds, the average user won’t encounter major performance bottlenecks. But as a home lab connoisseur, a 10 GbE connection is a solid upgrade for my system, especially since my Proxmox server and NAS units support this blazing-fast standard.

Trust me, few things are as amazing as watching your PC’s file transfer speeds jump from a mere 225 MB/s to a whopping 1200+ MB/s. This is another “me” factor, but having a proper 10 Gigabit connection on my main PC makes it a lot easier to conduct benchmarks for my NAS reviews. Otherwise, I’d have to switch from Proxmox to Windows on my home server machine just to perform file transfer benchmarks, CrystalDiskMark evaluations, and other tests.

My NIC isn't the only non-GPU device occupying my mobo's PCIe slots

Besides my network card, I also consider my 4-port USB card a worthwhile purchase, and I already have plans to grab a USB 4 adapter in the future. While I'm a part of the always-wired faction, there are times when I have to hang my head in defeat and connect to a wireless network. Since my motherboard lacks built-in Wi-Fi, a wireless PCIe card comes in handy for those scenarios.

  • TP-Link 10GB PCIe Network Card (TX401)
    $78 $100 Save $22
  • Ipolex 10Gb NIC Dual RJ45 Port PCIe Network Card
    $52 $54 Save $2

Once my RTX 3080 Ti can no longer pull its own weight, I plan to use the PCIe Gen 3 x8 slot in my mobo to pair my Intel Arc A750 with my system and run Lossless Scaling off the dual-GPU setup. Despite sounding absolutely unhinged, it works surprisingly well. So well, in fact, that I'd call it a spiritual successor to the dual-GPU setups of yore.