Researching for a future build in a few months, and I'm looking for some clarification on how the listed lanes work for a mobo chipset.
Using the Z370 as an example (I'm pre-researching now, but ultimately waiting for Z390's), it took me forever to clarify that the CPU (Coffee Lake LGA1151 300 type i7) has 16 lanes built-in which are used for graphics cards, and that the listed 24 lanes for the 370 chipset is in addition to those 16, not the total including them. But then that lead me to wonder how the PCIe 3.0 lanes were used, or made available for use.
Using the Asus ROG Maximus X Hero (wifi) for further example, I know that the 16 lanes from the CPU are what will be used by my GPU. But are the additional 24 lanes used by the mobo's other connections (SATA, USB, wifi, M.2 etc) completely utilized by the mobo, or are some of them left open to be used for additional addon devices thru any of the PCIe 3.0 expansion slots? this mobo's PCIe expansions are listed as:
2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8 or x8/x4/x4)
1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 (x4 mode) *1
3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x1
Reference
I know if I use 1 GPU, it would use x16, and if I used 2, it would pair them at x8 x8, but obviously there are extra PCIe slots on my mobo besides the 2 main PCIe 3.0x16. So lets say I wanted to SLI 2 GPUs, can I then possibly use a couple of the smaller PCIe's for other devices (say a soundcard, additional SSD, Capture Card, etc) and how would adding those affect the bandwidth for the devices I have plugged into the PCIe slots?
My burning question boils down to this: is my MAX amount of lanes I can have between ALL my PCIe slots total to 16x? do additional expansion cards (that are NOT graphics cars) take away from my GPU's, potentially throttling a single GPU to 8x, and SLI to 8x,4x, and if so, how does that affect things?
The more detailed the answer, and how mobo Lanes work the better, I'm hoping to learn, and a lot of descriptions seem to assume people to know more than they do, leaving me often confused. Thanks a bunch all!
Using the Z370 as an example (I'm pre-researching now, but ultimately waiting for Z390's), it took me forever to clarify that the CPU (Coffee Lake LGA1151 300 type i7) has 16 lanes built-in which are used for graphics cards, and that the listed 24 lanes for the 370 chipset is in addition to those 16, not the total including them. But then that lead me to wonder how the PCIe 3.0 lanes were used, or made available for use.
Using the Asus ROG Maximus X Hero (wifi) for further example, I know that the 16 lanes from the CPU are what will be used by my GPU. But are the additional 24 lanes used by the mobo's other connections (SATA, USB, wifi, M.2 etc) completely utilized by the mobo, or are some of them left open to be used for additional addon devices thru any of the PCIe 3.0 expansion slots? this mobo's PCIe expansions are listed as:
2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8 or x8/x4/x4)
1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 (x4 mode) *1
3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x1
Reference
I know if I use 1 GPU, it would use x16, and if I used 2, it would pair them at x8 x8, but obviously there are extra PCIe slots on my mobo besides the 2 main PCIe 3.0x16. So lets say I wanted to SLI 2 GPUs, can I then possibly use a couple of the smaller PCIe's for other devices (say a soundcard, additional SSD, Capture Card, etc) and how would adding those affect the bandwidth for the devices I have plugged into the PCIe slots?
My burning question boils down to this: is my MAX amount of lanes I can have between ALL my PCIe slots total to 16x? do additional expansion cards (that are NOT graphics cars) take away from my GPU's, potentially throttling a single GPU to 8x, and SLI to 8x,4x, and if so, how does that affect things?
The more detailed the answer, and how mobo Lanes work the better, I'm hoping to learn, and a lot of descriptions seem to assume people to know more than they do, leaving me often confused. Thanks a bunch all!
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