Review on 💾 Xiwai Low Profile PCI-E 3.0 x1 Lane M.2 NGFF SSD Adapter Card - Boost Nvme AHCI Performance with PCI Express Integration by Adam Browning

I'm giving the Xiwai Low Profile PCI-E 3.0 x1 M.2 Adapter Card one star because the brass screw mount to insert into the hole depends on the length of your M.2 drive and it's too big doesn't fit. Although I'm a retired embedded systems developer with years of experience, I actually had a hard time modifying it to make it work. So you have two choices when you need to use this card. One is to use a brass bracket on the back of the card that looks like a nut, but this forces the M.2 drive to actually make contact with the board. While I tested this and it worked, it is not recommended as too many exposed copper sections can cause a short if they touch the board. You can use a piece of insulating material between the circuit board and the M.2 drive, but that will still bend the M.2 drive and stress both it and the connector, which they weren't designed for. It is recommended that one side of the brass holder be filed to fit the holes. Unfortunately, this is much more difficult than it seems. The brass holder is very small and should not be held in hands when serving. So I actually screwed the brass bracket into the corner hole on the board (meant for the PCI bracket) and then used a Dremel tool to sharpen the brass bracket to fit (with a light hammer hit). However, this must be done with extreme caution because if you file it too deep it will be loose and not stuck in the hole and if that is not enough and you try to hammer it you can break the board. Also please do not use a freehand dremel tool like this unless you are very very experienced as it is quite dangerous. If you don't like or don't have a Dremel tool, just use a regular small file. The only good news is that after I manually resized the holder and carefully hammered it into the hole, the board itself worked perfectly. Read/write speeds are limited to around 800MB/s, but that's because it uses one PCIe lane instead of four. But the bottom line is that this card really isn't fit for purpose as the average user can't assemble it properly. So really look for another board if you don't know how to work with small electrical/mechanical devices.