Check the Size of Your Expansion Cards

Before purchasing expansion cards for your PC (such as a new video card, a new drive interface card, etc.), it may be wise to get the size of the card and compare it to how much room your motherboard design has allotted for the card. Yes, all PCI slots have the same connectors, but the room between the PCI slot and, say, your CPU chip (with a fan on top!), may not accommodate larger cards! For example, some motherboards can not take the combination of the Matrox Millennium II (c) and the Diamond Monster 3D (c) cards due to lack of space. It's no fun to change out motherboards just to get a new expansion card to fit, but it does happen.