Anyone who has a gaming PC knows that you use a PCIe socket for installing the most important component on your PC, a graphics card. But not everyone knows what to do with the extra PCIe sockets since SLI is no longer supported by modern GPUs.

Well, luckily, you don't have to let that extra space go to waste as you can use those secondary sockets to install expansion cards for your PC and give it extra functionality. A PCIe expansion card uses your extra PCIe sockets to add new capabilities to your PC, like faster Ethernet, more USB sockets, or Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities, which can be genuinely useful depending on your PC setup.

4 PCIe USB expansion Card

Extra USB ports for more peripherals

If you find yourself constantly unplugging your peripherals to make space for new cables, then you might want to add a few more USB ports to your PC. While you can buy a USB hub, some people prefer to have USB ports attached to the PC case, others don't have the desktop space for USB hubs, or don't want reduced bandwidth.

This makes buying a USB PCIe expansion card a great upgrade for your system. This can also be incredibly useful if you need a different kind of USB port like a USB-c or if you want to add more USB 3.0 ports to your PC.

3 SATA PCIe expansion card

More storage is always better

Are you always running out of space? Well, you can easily add more SATA ports to your motherboard using a SATA PCIe expansion card. While buying a bigger storage drive is always an option, this means you will still have extra drives lying around not being used.

So you might as well put those extra PCIe lanes to good use and add a few more SATA ports for a new HDD or SSD to be installed. If you use M.2 drives, then you can buy an M.2 expansion card instead, but you will need a full x16 slot for this.

2 Wi-Fi PCIe card

Add Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to your PC

Whether you have an old or a new PC, it's not always guaranteed that your motherboard has built-in Wi-Fi. But if you are tired of running an Ethernet cable from your PC to your router, then a PCIe Wi-Fi expansion card might be exactly what you need. Although it may not be as reliable as a wired connection, it is more than enough for the average user.

Another benefit of a PCIe Wi-Fi expansion card is that they usually also have Bluetooth capabilities integrated into the card, meaning that if your motherboard doesn't have built-in Bluetooth, then you can use this one expansion card for both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

1 10Gbps Network PCIe card

For faster Ethernet and transfer speeds

Most motherboards will have an Ethernet port on the back with at least 1 gigabit support. This should be enough for most PC users, as there are few people who will have internet speeds that exceed this. But there is another reason that you may want to get a faster network PCIe expansion card for your PC.

If you have a home server or NAS system, then you will benefit from the faster file transfer speeds of a 10Gbps network card. This is incredibly helpful if you are constantly moving files to and from your server, and is especially important if you are working with large media files.

Not all PCIe expansion cards are still useful

Using PCIe expansion cards used to be much more popular in the past, but modern motherboards tend to have fewer PCIe lanes (x16) since the death of SLI and dual GPU setups. This, in addition to the advancements of USB and other software, has left a lot of other expansion cards obsolete on newer motherboards.

For instance, sound cards and video capture cards used to be the best PCIe expansion cards for PC users. But due to advancements in audio software and integrated hardware on modern motherboards, they are mostly irrelevant. And anyone who works professionally with audio will have a dedicated DAC for their audio needs. Video capture cards are in a similar position.

Before modern screen capture, you would have had to run a secondary PC with a capture card to record and stream your gameplay. But since we have software like OBS, it has become less necessary. Even if you have an older PC, you can use your dedicated GPU software like ShadowPlay (Nvidia) or Radeon ReLive (AMD), that uses secondary chips on the GPUs to record, which doesn't impede your performance while gaming. These cards can still be beneficial if you are a professional in the field, but for any normal user these expansion cards are mostly a relic of the past.