Question Can't Use PCIeX4 slot on Gigabyte X470 Gaming Ultra

[ChangeinPortland]

I have the Gigabyte Auros X470 Ultra Gaming. I am getting some serious coil whine in my headphones from my Radeon RX 580 8g Red Devil video card in the PCIeX16 slot. I currently have my Soundblaster Audiology card in the topmost X2 slot, but this is right above the primary video card slot. I would like to move it to the bottom of the board to the PCIeX4 slot. I have MK2 modules installed in both slots, Samsung Evo 970 500g NMVe in the top running OS, and ADATA SX6000LNP in the secondary as a scratch disk... When I try to move the soundcard to the bottom X4 slot it isn't recognized in the OS. Reinstalling drivers seem to do nothing, and I'm not sure where to go at this point.
Thanks for your advice in advance.

 

[Eximo]

Not possible, your use of the second M.2 slot has disabled that PCIe slot. Best you could do would be to install the sound card in the other x16 slot, which would drop your GPU down to 8x.

1. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)*
   • Actual support may vary by CPU.
   • For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
2. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)*
   • Actual support may vary by CPU.
   • The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot operates at up to x8 mode.
   (The PCIEX16 and PCIEX8 slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
3. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
   * The PCIEX4 slot shares bandwidth with the M2B_SOCKET connector. The PCIEX4 slot becomes unavailable when a device is installed in the M2B_SOCKET connector.
4. 2 x PCI Express x1 slots
   (The PCIEX4 and PCI Express x1 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)

Not sure you have the name of sound card correct. What is the exact model? The motherboard has a fine audio chip that should be fairly well isolated from the GPU.

1. Realtek® ALC1220-VB codec
2. High Definition Audio
3. 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel
4. Support for S/PDIF Out

I myself used to find sound cards necessary due to interference from GPUs, (and a hard drive once) with onboard audio. But the last few generations of hardware they've pretty much made it industry standard to have good isolation and even decent amplifiers on the high end boards (the really high end ones have sockets for amps)

If you are using some advanced features on that card, then you'll have to wait for an audiophile to chime in. Though these days I understand external sound devices and DACs are more popular.

 

[ChangeinPortland]

@Eximo , Thanks for your speedy response and sorry about my late one. The sound card installed is:
Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Professional Audio PCI Express
https://support.creative.com/Products/ProductDetails.aspx?catID=1&subCatID=208&prodID=17926&prodName=Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Professional Audio PCI Express&subCatName=X-Fi Series&CatName=
I did have the name confused with my old card in my sister's rig now. I had been under the impression that while the X4 PCIe slot and lower MK2 share a rail and resources both could function at the same time. I had just thought it would be like having two cards installed on the X16 slots where it would downshift to X8 for both. So I thought that even though the MK2 SSD is much faster it would just be throttled to the X2 speed of the soundcard in the X4 slot? This is not the case? Thanks again in advance....
PS. I do not like using the onboard sound device because the user interface utility is from shit, and I do a lot of video recording/streaming and music recording/editing. The Creative card gives me MUCH more control of things...

 

[Third-Eye]

I would just put the sound card in the second PCIE 16x slot. The video card running on 8x PCIE will only lose you maybe 5% performance maximum at worst. If it were a RTX 2060 or RX 5700 that it might be more of an issue.

 

[ChangeinPortland]

that slot is so close to the card emitting the whine im not sure if it will reduce it or just be the same but I'll give it a try, thanks !!!