Enough Lanes PCI-E

[mrwonderfull]

Hi there fellow enhusiasts, so i,m thinking of assembling a new System , wich consists of

a Asus ROG Strix Z370-F GAMING Mobo & a Intel Core i7-8700K .


also i want to add 2 M.2 ,s to this system & a Soundcard


The Soundcard is a 1 × Slot




Now i,m wondering if i have enough Pci-Lanes for all to have full bandwith

i,m seeing on the Specs of the 8700k that is has 16 × Pci-e , so my basic understanding tells me this is enough for 1 Graphics Card in the 16 × Slot, please correct me if i,m wrong.

from what i,ve bin told the M.2 Drives operate from the Southbridge & are not connected to the Cpu in this matter , but i am not exactly sure

i want to connect 1 M.2 on a 4 × Slot with a Passive cooler , because they get 2 hot for my taste


So basicly this is my Question , can i add these item,s to the Mobo , the Graphics Card , Soundcard & SSD to the mother board without my lanes being throttled down with this set up ?


thanks for any help , much appreciated !

https://shop.aquacomputer.de/product_info.php?products_id=3659

https://www.asus.com/nl/Motherboards/ROG-STRIX-Z370-F-GAMING/

https://ark.intel.com/products/126684/Intel-Core-i7-8700K-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-4_70-GHz

 

[austintx1985]

Since you asked a couple of questions, I'll try to answer all of them separately.

First, your M.2 question. The M.2 is a SSD and is inserted into a special slot on the motherboard. This has no effect on your PCI slot availability as they do not go into a PCI slot. Even though your motherboard supports them running at PCIe 3.0 x4 mode, that doesn't mean they would affect the availability to put other devices on the motherboard. The way your motherboard is designed, you would have to make several modifications in order to put any kind of 3rd-party cooler on the M.2s, so I would strongly suggest against that.

Now, to your graphics card question. Your motherboard has 2 PCIe slots that run at x16 mode, which means that either one can support up to 16 lanes, or they can split it at 8 lanes each. That doesn't mean that you are limited to just 1 graphics card and nothing else. Most graphics cards can run at x8 mode, if necessary, with little to no noticeable difference. Installing a sound card will not mess with this at all, as your sound card is using a different bus to connect to the CPU. Yes, it's still a PCIe slot, but it's a bit different.

tl;dr Yes, you should be able to install all of those onto your motherboard with no issues.

 

[mrwonderfull]

Thx for the extensive explanation Austin .

Ok , so if i understand correctly i can add the 3 Item,s to the Pci e Slot,s without the system downgrading the bandwith on each individuall item

sounds good , yes i was wondering if that actually could happen & what the effect would be , especially on the SSD in Slot PCIe 3.0 x4 mode with the Kryo adapter/cooler on it .

Do you think this has a possible effect on it,s Read/Writing Speeds ?

haha , i digress , just another question my brain pooops out 😛

Thanks a million Austin

 

[austintx1985]

SSDs generally don't generate as much heat as a HDD due to the fact that they have no moving parts. I personally wouldn't see a reason to add a cooler to it, unless you really wanted to. However, cooling it will simply extend its lifecycle, not read/write speeds, since, again, it has no moving parts. As long as it isn't getting above, I would say 50-60C, it will be fine.