That spare M.2 slot in your PC isn't just for storage, here are 4 clever things you can do with it

Published Oct 22, 2026, 2:30 PM EDT Ever since he got his first smartphone, the legendary Nokia 6600, back in 2005, Goran became obsessed with technology. This obsession had only gotten worse after he received his first gaming PC a couple of months later. He fell in love with video games in the early '90s, shortly after embarking on his gaming journey with the Sega Master System II and SNES. Since then, he has built dozens of PCs, played thousands of games, and authored hundreds of articles about PC hardware, gaming hardware, and video games. He knows everything there is to know about the PC gaming and PC hardware space, and while his console gaming knowledge isn't as comprehensive, he considers himself a console veteran. Goran has almost a decade of experience writing about tech and video games for numerous web publications including TechSpot, TechPowerUp, and EsportsHeadlines. He has been writing for How-To Geek since December 2022. When he isn't gaming or deciding which component of his PC to upgrade next, you can find him strolling around Novi Sad while listening to music and contemplating what to play next. Got a spare M.2 slot in your PC? Instead of waiting for SSD prices to drop to finally be able to populate it, which could take a few years, you can use it for something else. As long as it’s an NVMe slot, which means it has PCIe connectivity, and not a SATA-only slot, you can use it for all kinds of purposes, such as hooking up an eGPU, equipping your PC with a local AI accelerator. Equip your PC with an AI accelerator module They can be great for local computer vision models, home surveillance, and even small LLMs Probably the most “current” use for a spare M.2 slot is running a local AI accelerator module, such as the Hailo-8 or Google’s Coral, which offer 26 TOPS and 4 TOPS of AI performance, respectively. Even the humble Coral has enough steam in its engine to run local computer vision models, home surveillance platforms like Frigate, and local AI inference for IoT and smart home setups. The best part is that you can use the Coral even in an M.2 Wi-Fi slot (an A key or E key M.2 slot) as long as the slot is wired for PCIe, with the module also available in a regular 2280 M.2 form factor. The Hailo-8 is a beefier module you can use for the same things the Coral is made for, along with speech-to-text based on models such as Whisper-tiny and Whisper-base, DIY motion capture and gesture control projects, AI upscaling and image denoising, OCR, and more. Hailo also offers the Hailo-10H, which packs 40 TOPS (INT4) of AI performance and up to 8GB of onboard memory, and can be used for small LLMs and generative AI. Pretty solid for a tiny M.2-based AI accelerator. Hailo-8 M.2 AI Accelerator Module Put that spare M.2 slot to good use with the Hailo-8 M.2 AI Accelerator Module, which provides 26 TOPS of high-efficiency AI inferencing for all kinds of DIY projects. Add an eGPU to your PC with an M.2 to PCIe riser FYI, you aren’t limited to eGPUs; you can add almost any PCIe add-on card If you own a laptop, a mini PC, or an ITX-based machine without a dedicated GPU and without a way to install a dedicated GPU directly on the motherboard, you can get an M.2 to PCIe riser and hook up pretty much any GPU you want. You can even add a second GPU to a setup that already has one in case you need it for local AI processing, rendering, or simply as a dedicated GPU for stuff like frame generation with Lossless Scaling. Now, the kicker is that you aren’t limited to eGPUs. Since an M.2 to PCIe riser turns your M.2 slot into a regular PCIe slot, you can actually use it for most PCIe add-on cards. For example, you can equip your machine with a NIC (network interface card), a beefy sound card, a capture card, and more. Before you buy an M.2 to PCIe riser, be aware of a few things. Firstly, you will be limited to a PCIe x4 interface, and while there are adapters such as the JMT ADT-K43SG-BK that support PCIe 5.0 x4 bandwidth, the M.2 slot will be the limiting factor. For instance, if it’s a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, you’ll be stuck with PCIe 4.0 x4 bandwidth. You might also need an external power supply for the eGPU if your machine doesn’t have its own PSU that can power the GPU. Upgrade to 10G Ethernet even if you don’t have a free PCIe slot M.2 NICs are a thing Credit: UEEGO / Amazon You’ve probably noticed that I mentioned you can add a PCIe NIC to an M.2 to PCIe riser, which you could use to equip your PC with 10G Ethernet. If you’re interested in doing this, it gets better. Instead of using a riser, you can get an M.2 NIC and plug it directly into an M.2 slot, with some options even supporting M.2 slots reserved for Wi-Fi cards. If you want to use an M.2 Wi-Fi slot, you’re limited to 2.5G Ethernet connectivity, which isn’t too shabby. But if you’ve got a spare 2280 NVMe M.2 slot, you can use a 10G Ethernet adapter. It’s a bit on the pricier side, but it can be worth it. You can use it with a mini PC or an SFF PC, a NAS, a home server, or any other computer with a free M.2 slot. There are even 25G M.2 NICs, but the ones I found only come with SFP28 ports. Add more SATA or USB ports to your PC One M.2 slot can turn into as many as six SATA ports Credit: RIITOP / Amazon When it comes to more pedestrian uses for that spare M.2 slot, you can plug in an M.2 to SATA adapter and add up to six SATA ports to your PC. This isn’t really useful for regular users, but if you own a NAS or a media server with an NVMe M.2 slot, or plan to build one, turning a single M.2 slot into six SATA ports for HDDs or SSDs is an excellent way to create a compact machine that can store terabytes of data. Aside from adding SATA ports, you can also use the M.2 slot to expand your PC’s USB connectivity. You can either get an adapter that adds an internal USB header, with some supporting headers up to USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20Gbps), or plug in an adapter with a USB port built right in. The second option usually gives you a single high-speed USB-C port, but accessing it might be tricky since it’ll sit inside your case, and it might also require a Molex power connector. RIITOP M.2 to SATA Adapter [6-Port] Turn a single M.2 slot into six SATA ports with the RIITOP M.2 to SATA adapter, a plug-and-play card that’s perfect for building a compact NAS or media server packed with hard drives. Turns out that M.2 slots are actually quite versatile Most people look at an M.2 slot and see it only as a storage expansion interface, or maybe a slot for Wi-Fi cards, which isn’t surprising considering that vendors mostly focus on SSDs when they talk about M.2 connectivity. But the reality is that M.2 slots are quite versatile, especially NVMe M.2 slots that offer PCIe connectivity. With an appropriate M.2 to PCIe riser, you can hook up almost any PCIe add-on card to your PC via one of its M.2 slots, even a proper GPU. There are also M.2 add-on cards that can expand your PC with extra USB or SATA ports, or give it high-speed Ethernet connectivity. The only downside is that, aside from AI accelerators, most M.2 expansion modules are made by obscure brands with unknown track records when it comes to manufacturing quality, QA, warranty, and similar things.