PCI Lanes, Skylake vs Haswell-E

[Zelgiusthebrave]

Hello ladies and gentlemen, I am having a few quarrels with myself over a PC I am planning out. My initial plan was to go with an i7 6700k on a Maximus Hero VIII, dual SLI ASUS Strix 980Ti's, and because of some recent purchases (Elgato HD60 Pro and professional sound card to integrate audio through my Mackie Mixer) and I realized the 6700k only has 16 PCI lanes. I know it's doable since a GPU can run at x16/x8/x4/x1 right? So I'd have a GPU at x8, one at x4 (or does it not do that when using SLI?) and my sound card and Elgato both at x1 correct?

 

As much as I'd like to keep this as inexpensive as possible if I have to go to Haswell-E to build this I SUPPOSE I can....

 

For good measure, this is the partlist I have so far. I already own the ZXR Sound card and Elgato as I'm learning how to use them with my older build now. http://pcpartpicker.com/user/zelgiusthebrave/saved/MFNhP6

[Ophidio]

Hello ladies and gentlemen, I am having a few quarrels with myself over a PC I am planning out. My initial plan was to go with an i7 6700k on a Maximus Hero VIII, dual SLI ASUS Strix 980Ti's, and because of some recent purchases (Elgato HD60 Pro and professional sound card to integrate audio through my Mackie Mixer) and I realized the 6700k only has 16 PCI lanes. I know it's doable since a GPU can run at x16/x8/x4/x1 right? So I'd have a GPU at x8, one at x4 (or does it not do that when using SLI?) and my sound card and Elgato both at x1 correct?

 

As much as I'd like to keep this as inexpensive as possible if I have to go to Haswell-E to build this I SUPPOSE I can....

You are probably better off going with a 5820K and an X99 mobo so you can get more support for lanes. Plus it seems like you'd be doing some video editing and be processing a lot since you have an elgato which the 5820K would help you more and you'd benefit more from it instead of a 6700K

[KemoKa]

Nvidia GPUs don't support x4 connections. It's BS, but that's what they do.

 

Skylake has 16 PCIe lanes on the CPU and another four PCIe lanes on the DMI 3.0 interface. If you wire in your sound card and Elgato into slots that are tied into the DMI then you won't have to worry about PCIe lanes on the CPU. You can still have your x8-x8 config.

 

But in any case, if you need tons of PCIe connectivity, the way to go is X99.

[Samfisher]

CPU has PCIE lanes, and so do the chipset.  You have more than enough PCIE lanes for what you want to do.

[Morgan MLGman]

5820k is actually 20$ cheaper right now in the US. If you get a cheaper motherboard along with it, the price increase would be marginal.

[Zelgiusthebrave]

Nvidia GPUs don't support x4 connections. It's BS, but that's what they do.

 

Skylake has 16 PCIe lanes on the CPU and another four PCIe lanes on the DMI 3.0 interface. If you wire in your sound card and Elgato into slots that are tied into the DMI then you won't have to worry about PCIe lanes on the CPU. You can still have your x8-x8 config.

 

But in any case, if you need tons of PCIe connectivity, the way to go is X99.

 

DMI 3.0? Honestly never heard of it. Got and links to a page or video explaining it and maybe how to use it?

 

 

EDIT:

Upon reading into things more, it looks like on the Maximus VIII Hero, the 2 light grey PCI slots are the 2 X16 slots controlled by the CPU and the rest are with the PCH, so in this instance, I'd use the 2 light grey slots (slot 2 and 4 if you start with the PCIe x1 at the top and the PCIe x16 at the bottom) for the two 980Ti's and then the other slots for the Elgato and the Sound Card? Only thing I don't like about the ZXR Card is it's a dual card setup, so it takes up 2 slots with both the cards.

 

As much as I don't want to use a reference card since it will clash with the color scheme, I may have to go with the blower style cards to make this work out...

 

I've also started looking into an x99 build and how I'd set it up properly.

[brob]

Hello ladies and gentlemen, I am having a few quarrels with myself over a PC I am planning out. My initial plan was to go with an i7 6700k on a Maximus Hero VIII, dual SLI ASUS Strix 980Ti's, and because of some recent purchases (Elgato HD60 Pro and professional sound card to integrate audio through my Mackie Mixer) and I realized the 6700k only has 16 PCI lanes. I know it's doable since a GPU can run at x16/x8/x4/x1 right? So I'd have a GPU at x8, one at x4 (or does it not do that when using SLI?) and my sound card and Elgato both at x1 correct?

 

As much as I'd like to keep this as inexpensive as possible if I have to go to Haswell-E to build this I SUPPOSE I can....

 

Hero VIII has 6 PCIe 3.0 expansion slots. If all are filled, two will use 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes each from the cpu, three will use 1 PCIe 3.0 lane each from the chipset, and one will use 4 PCIe lanes from the chipset.

 

Most X99 motherboards off the same number of expansion slots, the only difference being the number of PICe 3.0 lanes each supports.

 

There are motherboards that support 7 expansion slots Asus Z97-WS, X99-E WS.