Yes to SSDs. Look up NVMe stuff. I managed to get one (Toshiba KBG30ZMT256G, sort of a RC100) working in my Dell in the WLAN spot. Of course the BIOS doesn't support NVMe so it won't boot from it, but other than that it works well[1]. You might need to watch out for the lengths, and potentially the keying of the connector. Just had a quick Google and found:
https://www.atpinc.com/blog/what-is-m.2-M-B-BM-key-socket-3

Don't know about other fun devices.

[1] there's a whole different saga involving the world's smallest USB hub by which I managed to fit a USB drive inside the screen bezel, boot from that in to a boot manager (Clover), and from there finally boot from the NVMe drive.

Almoststew1990 wrote on 2021-03-23, 09:17:

I have a dell laptop that has three miniPCI-e slots.

When asking such questions it would be sensible to specify which Dell laptop.

I am not sure if the slot can handle PCIe, but I have a Crucial CT240M500SSD3 in my Dell Inspiron 7720 what shows up as a SATA 600 SSD and can be booted from.

One thing to bear in mind: there are different kinds of mPCIe slots, all physically identical:

- regular mPCIe carrying both PCIe and USB signals
- mPCIe slots with either PCIe or USB but not both
- mSATA slots, with SATA connections and not PCIe

Find out which you have (tip: field service manual) before selecting hardware. With three slots, chances are at least one is mSATA.

Good point, I was just responding to the direct request about whether miniPCIe SSDs existed, didn't think to check what the ports actually are.

I haven't followed it closely, but the ports do seem to have ended up a bit confusing to me. I'm looking at a Gigbyte H81N motherboard right now which has both an mSATA and miniPCIe ports, both keyed the same way. So the PCIe WiFi card can physically fit in either slot, but obviously will only work in the PCIe one. And other boards apparently have some slots will work with either type of card. So you have to check whether the slot is PCIe (and is that x2 or x4), SATA, or both, and then what the card is. I'm a bit surprised it wasn't possible to use the keying options to make things a bit more foolproof.

I think the 7720 has a couple of standard SATA ports, an mSATA port (I guess that's what you're using), and what is probably a mini PCIe x2 port for the WiFi card. Found a Dell Support question from someone accidentally trying to use a PCIe card in the mSATA port, which didn't work.

With mine (Latitude 5450), for storage it only officially has a single SATA port, so to make life simple I could have just replaced the HDD with a SATA SSD (or mSATA -> SATA adapter) and it would have booted fine. But where's the fun in that? I was never going to use the WLAN socket for WLAN (I have a phone for that), and being able to put in two drives meant I could keep booting from the old drive whilst getting the new one set up.

Brilliant plan, except for the bit about the BIOS not actually being able to access the NVMe drive.

Back to original question: video capture:
https://www.avermedia.com/professional/product/c353/overview
Not sure how you'd get the cables out nicely.

red-ray wrote on 2021-03-23, 10:49:

Almoststew1990 wrote on 2021-03-23, 09:17:

I have a dell laptop that has three miniPCI-e slots.

When asking such questions it would be sensible to specify which Dell laptop.

I am not sure if the slot can handle PCIe, but I have a Crucial CT240M500SSD3 in my Dell Inspiron 7720 what shows up as a SATA 600 SSD and can be booted from.

It's a Dell XPS M1530. The service manual doesn't state much about the ports, but what is intended to go in there is a WLAN card (installed), Flash Cache Module or Ultra Wide Band module, and WWAN card.

There are hacks to install a standard 3D graphics card via slot box into a mini pcie

Sure it’s not as fast and can be glitchy but still better than most onboard