Does sata express use pci-e lanes

[Finnish person]

Just wondering if 4790k with 16 pci-e lanes can support gpu's in 8x/8x sli and sata express ssd, or do sata express ssd's also require pci-e lanes.

 

[Supernova1138]

SATA Express would be using PCI-E lanes off the chipset and not off the CPU, so it would not affect SLI, which uses CPU PCI-E lanes exclusively.

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

So basically I can use a SATA Express SSD and I can still run a single GPU in 16x mode and two GPUs in 8x/8x mode, correct? I want to clarify this myself if I decide to upgrade to a motherboard with that feature.

 

[Supernova1138]

Yeah, that's right, the storage controllers all take PCI-E lanes off the chipset, with the CPU lanes only used if the PCI-E x16 slots are in use.

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

Is there an article that explains this? I want to make sure before buying a Sabertooth Z97 MARK S motherboard and SATA Express SSD.

 

[Finnish person]

Thank you Supernova1138 for the answer you really helped me out!
Btw just asked this because I thought sata express needed more power from the cpu.

 

[Supernova1138]

Is there an article that explains this? I want to make sure before buying a Sabertooth Z97 MARK S motherboard and SATA Express SSD.

This article says that SATA Express is connected through the chipset on Z97, so it shouldn't be using CPU PCI-E lanes unless ASUS managed to use up all the chipset's connectivity on other devices for that specific board and decided to use the CPU PCI-E lanes, which I doubt is the case.

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

I'm confused. I was unable to find any SATA Express SSDs anywhere and the articles I found mentioned something about the port using PCI-E Gen 2 lanes, thus limiting speeds of SATA Express to 6 Mbps. So it makes no sense to have SATA Express ports if that's the case. So now the only way to run a faster SSD and SLI is to install a PCI-E or M.2 SSD on an X99 motherboard. These answers are misleading.

 

[Supernova1138]

SATA Express seems to be having trouble taking off, and it looks like M2 is going to be more popular. Some Z97 boards do have M2 ports, though they tend to be very expensive and high end ones. Z170 is supposedly going to have it as a more common feature and the Z170 chipset will have PCI-E 3.0 to help deal with bandwidth issues that might crop up on some of the higher speed storage controllers.

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

So basically the only way to combine a hard drive running at 10 Gb/s and SLI is to either upgrade to an X99 or Z170 motherboard / CPU. Never mind, then.