Gigabyte Z170 K3 - Help with my PCI-e lanes

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silicon30

Commendable
Dec 1, 2016
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Hi all,

So I have the Gigabyte Z170 Gaming K3 motherboard. It has a dedicated M.2 4x PCI-e connection.

What I want to do:

Run my GTX 1060 at x16 PCI-e 3rd gen in the main slot and add in an M.2 x4 PCI-e 3rd gen card.

Will this exceed my lane amounts? Im led to believe there is 16 lanes from the CPU and additional ones from the chipset although I don't quite understand the totals.

Finally, how many lanes does each SATA 3 slot use as my end board will probably have:

GTX 1060 - PCI-e x16
M.2 PCI-e SSD x4
SATA 3 slot with a big HDD for storage

Is this possible?!

Please help,

Many thanks
 
Solution
Mikel_4
The 32Gb M.2 lane is provided by Z170 express chipset, and the PCIEX16 slot 1 by CPU, both part don't affect each other data transfer.

Z170 express provide 20 PCIe 1X lane, don't confuse this lane to 16X skylake lane. Motherboard's dual or triple PCIe 16X slot become:

  • ■ Full 16X if only populate slot 1
    ■ 8X slot 1 with any slot 2 or 3 populated (your motherboard sadly don't support SLI because second PCIe long slot only run at 4X and wil run at 2X if PCIEX1_3 is populated)
    ■ 8X slot 1 + 4X slot 2 + 4X slot 3
Z170 lane diluted to:

  • ■ 16 lane if M.2 socket is populated (20 - 4)
    ■ 15 if one PCIe 1X slot is populated, 14 if two, 13 if three, each of this PCIe 3.0 1X has theoretic 1GB/s data transfer.
    ■ Since Z170 connect...
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Mikel_4

Mikel_4

Respectable
Oct 15, 2016
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The 32Gb M.2 lane is provided by Z170 express chipset, and the PCIEX16 slot 1 by CPU, both part don't affect each other data transfer.

Z170 express provide 20 PCIe 1X lane, don't confuse this lane to 16X skylake lane. Motherboard's dual or triple PCIe 16X slot become:

  • ■ Full 16X if only populate slot 1
    ■ 8X slot 1 with any slot 2 or 3 populated (your motherboard sadly don't support SLI because second PCIe long slot only run at 4X and wil run at 2X if PCIEX1_3 is populated)
    ■ 8X slot 1 + 4X slot 2 + 4X slot 3
Z170 lane diluted to:

  • ■ 16 lane if M.2 socket is populated (20 - 4)
    ■ 15 if one PCIe 1X slot is populated, 14 if two, 13 if three, each of this PCIe 3.0 1X has theoretic 1GB/s data transfer.
    ■ Since Z170 connect to CPU via 3.93 GB/s DMI 3.0 so in theory your motherboard still max out a Samsung 960 PRO (~ 1GB/s read/write) via M.2 socket + three WiFi card (max ~ 800MB/s) via PCIe 1X slots OR two WiFI card + one PCIe 1X sound card OR four add on PCIe 1X card without PCIEX4 being populated.
    ■For your case is not the matter of running out of lane but rather DMI 3.0 bandwidth already consumed by LAN + SATA + USB + audio + other chip/controller.
 
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