Eike Glaubitz

Okay, thanks Also saves me a lot of money. Then I'll just go with the 8086k

btw my 960pro is M.2 NVMe not PCIe, sry

I already thought that. So if I plugged my GFX and my optane into a gray slot (I have 2 x16 in gray), my GFX will use x8 and optane x4, and my NVMe should use the remaining 4?

Yea, but iirc, those '24 lanes' are like real 4 lanes, acting like a hub? So full bandwidth (theoretically at least) shouldn't be possible

First of all, my hardware specs: Asus ROG Maximus X Hero (WiFi/AC) 4x8GB HyperX Fury 2.400MHz i7-8700k (may be upgraded to 8086k) 960pro NVMe SSD (512GB) Optane 900p (280GB) MSI 1080ti Gaming X 11G Disclaimer: I'm somewhat unexperienced in regards to lanes, speeds, and bottlenecks. Please feel free to correct everything. AFIAK, for full bandwidth, both, the optane and 960pro need x4, the 1080ti needs at least x8 (x16, but x8 shouldn't be a bottleneck) and I think my Z370 also needs up to x4 for my SATA/USB3 devices. That's definitely more than the available 16 lanes with both the 8700k and 8086k. So my question is: would I experience any kind of bottleneck due to the lack of PCIe lanes, when everything is plugged in, and is ist worth upgrading to an i9? Mainly, I'm using this RIG for gaming and hosting "software"-servers like TS3/ARK/MC/etc., but I don't wanna "feel" any bottlenecks. So if upgrading to 28 or even 44 lanes would cause my system to boot like 2% faster, idc. But I definetely don't want stuttering in-game or server-lags because my NVMe drive has to few dedicated lanes. Thanks in advance for any advice.