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A “late” question: (I estimate I have 1/2 your computer knowledge. Others please chime in too.)

You said you’d added a PCIe card to run your hard drives. I’m in the process of upgrading an Acer AXC-704G-UW61 for my wife. I have an SSD to add to it, up to 16 GB RAM (max it will take), and am thinking about adding an internal USB hub.* The cpu is only a Celeron N3050, soldered in, so, that’s an ultimate limiter. However, my wife doesn’t do much cpu intensive stuff — limited temporary memory and the sluggish HD (my “good” machines all have SSD’s) is almost always the choker @ present.

However, the motherboard Acer plopped in these is actually a laptop mb and can handle only 2 drives**: Since I want to leave the HD in as the data drive, that means there’d be no controller for the DVD +/- RW drive, which my wife uses a lot.

One fellow on You Tube added an internal USB 2.0 hub, then ran a USB 2.0 to mini-SATA cable to the DVD player/writer. That adds USB ports as a bonus, but, I am wondering how well this will work (to run the DVD player/writer?)

HWinInfo reports my current SATA speed at 6GBs, so, there’s no reason to add a PCIe controller card to try to improve speed to the HD or soon to be installed SSD. But, what would be the cheapest sufficient way to run the DVD player/writer? Add a SATA 3 controller card anyway?

*There is no USB3.0 header, tho’ 2 USB 3.0 ports in the rear are soldered onto the mb. There are USB 2.0 headers that can be “intercepted”, so to speak. Additional USB ports of either type would be useful.

Possibly a card to add USB 3.0 ports would make sense, an then run one of those ports to the DVD player/writer via an adaptor cable?

**Note that there is only one expansion slot on the mb - that PCIe slot. I suppose I could search to see if somebody makes a combo PCIe internal USB 3.0 ports + SATA drive controller card, if such exist at a reasonable price. I can always punch out a knockout & run a USB 3.0 cable or two out the back of the machine.

Thoughts and suggestions?

Thanks!

I have no idea how fast a Celeron N3050 is, but you say it's soldered in. I'm just gonna jump on that without reasoning as time for a new MB. All the rest of the stuff you typed means nothing if you cannot expand to do what you want. I'm so tight I pinch a nickle till it farts, but at some point you just have to live like you want to and looking at what you are trying to plan just won't get you there. You can go to ebay and get a half decent MoBo for $150 that will do pretty much everything you need.

Instead of buying memory and add in cards for the old Acer, invest your money in a better board.

I just retired a board that overclocked to 3.8gbs, but it had a 2 core D950 Intel in it. I had 1 pcie slot filled with a video card, but I needed 3 screens so my other video was AGP. There was literally no more slots and everything was overclocked. I bought a SATA drive that was SATA 3 running 1.5gbs. I then acquired a junker from a neighbor that threw it in the trash. It was an HP 580t with a missing Hard drive. It had 5 PCIe slots so I filled them up with left over cards I have laying around. They only thing I had to buy was a $23 SATA 3 card that runs at 6gbs. The other thing is a video card to get my 3 screens. I then transferred my 6 hard drives into the HP. Having filled this machine, I discovered the sound was messed up that I eventually fixed. Now for less than $100 in cards, I have a decent machine( for the kind of work I do) and have moved on from my old box.

You might surprise yourself what is for sale on ebay instead of fretting over trying to dress up a box with a soldered in CPU. The people that toss around words like Rysen 7, 32 gb of memory and Nvidea 3000 something are gamers that inherited their money. They are the same people that toss the old machine and buy a new one so someone like you and me can render video and write emails and read FR.Many machines today don't even have a DVD in them.