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Comment by FractalParadigm | Hacker News Reader

For point [1] it's also trivial to file or Dremel the slot to be open-backed, if you're careful. I've done this successfully a handful of times, unsuccessfully a few more than that...

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Let me get you straight: you say that the process is trivial, yet you admit to have a worse than 50% failure ratio? What does “unsuccessfully” mean in this case? Is the part completely ruined? At what failure rate would you consider a process not-trivial?

Admittedly it was more of a tongue-in-cheek joke with some fact - I've done it successfully 4 or 5 times on systems meant for "production" only after testing on EoL/scheduled for the bin hardware with mixed results - at least two I hit data pins and rendered the port unusable, one the Dremel slipped and ended up cutting a slot through the board itself, and another one you would have sworn was perfect but just didn't go (probably something shorted out I couldn't physically see). I did three good ones after those 5 or 6 failures, at which point a friend wanted me to do all the x1 ports on his board to fit x4 NICs he had, not caring if it was successful or not (he had backup hardware just in case, which thanfully wasn't needed), followed by another friend with a server he wanted to put a GPU in. If someone handed me a board today I'd feel fairly comfortable I could do it without issue; I still wouldn't exactly recommend it to the faint-of-heart or those without steady hands, but once you kinda 'figure out' the right way to do it with the right tools, it's pretty straightforward.

It's trivial to take a rotary tool to a piece of plastic, but now you have plastic dust and shavings all over the place. like on the PCIE contacts.

You could also use a razor blade or other such manual cutting devices...

There is a useful lesson here: most people don’t use words to mean anything other than what they believe they are describing. Trivial to him means it doesn’t take a lot of time, which is how he uses the word, in the context of time. Now, he’s unaware that he’s wrong and he is also unaware that his misuse of the word means his explanation is irrelevant to anyone who doesn’t already understand him! In effect, he says nothing and you respond with confusion asking why you needed to understand what he didn’t!

(People are very very good with pretending at intelligence and bad at the practice of it)

True, I'm just really annoyed an open-back socket isn't the default choice for the manufacturers. Not like I enjoy using a Dremel on my motherboard...

You’ll find many cases where lack of open back slots usually also means there will be components behind the slot that will interfere with a full/half length card.

Also don’t use a Dremel or even a file a hobby knife or flush cutters work just fine. If you have a steady hand then a hot knife attachment for a soldering iron is fine too. The cutting wheel on a dremel tool can run off and the dust it produces can be conductive and short something.

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