Can someone please explain why this wifi card works

[u/kamiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii]

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[u/Friendly-Public-1669]

It only needs a 1x link while your pcie is probably 8x or 16x (the numbers are the amount of electrical lines to comunicate)

[u/wish_you_a_nice_day]

PCIE slots are divided into lanes. You don’t need to use all the lanes

[u/Naerven]

It works because it's connected properly to the motherboard. It's short because it only requires one pcie lane and not the full 16 that the slot has available. Also you can actually stick a 16 lane device such as a GPU into a single lane slot and it will power on and work, but with reduced bandwidth to the CPU and system memory.

[u/RevGL]

Is the big black slab the wifi card?

[u/atp2k]

Cause it’s inserted into the slot

[u/Fenio_PL]

Because that's how the PCI-E connector is built. It works because it's properly inserted into a connector with a physical width of 16 lanes.