Hello!
I apologize because I am an ultra noob to the forum and even more of a noob when it comes to a lot of the finer specifics to building computers. Thanks so much for your time and patience and just giving my question consideration.
I built my desktop about three years ago to edit video footage and color grade at home (was originally a Hackintosh, but I scrapped that and decided to stick with Windows 10). Typically I work at my office on a 2017 iMac (18,3), but due to the pandemic I'm now working full time from home. This brought up some thoughts of how I could expand my home setup. The 2 main areas I'm looking into investing in are:
Adding an I/O device (Blackmagic Ultra Studio mini 4K, requires Thunderbolt 3)
Adding a Thunderbolt 3 card (I'm thinking about Titan Ridge 2.0) for (2x) DAS OR adding a 10Gbe card for (2x) NAS
(the reason I'd like two separate large storage units is to have 1 dedicated for online speeds which would be all SSDs [like a QNAP TR004] and 1 dedicated to more archival footage that has slightly slower HDDs [like a Synology ])
This got me looking at my configuration and wondering if I had enough PCIE lanes and trying to learn more about them. Currently the hardware (I believe) that is taking up my PCIE lanes are: my GPU, boot drive in m.2 slot (1) and my spare drive in m.2 slot (2) running at 2x. Based on my research I believe my CPU has 40 lanes, but I'm not 100% if my MOBO has any effect on that number. I feel like I learned a good amount with my research, but I still have a couple questions I was wondering if anyone could answer for me.
If I max out and go over my PCIE lane capacity, do other PCIE devices (my graphics card, potential Thunderbolt card) lose their maximum speed capabilities or do they simply stop working?
If I do have 40 actual lanes, does that mean I have 16 lanes taken up for my GPU (it's in my 16x slot), 2 lanes for my spare m.2 and 4 lanes for my boot m.2 leaving me with 18 lanes to spare?
Does anyone think there could be any other issues with all of the I/O and storage considerations I should take into consideration (let's say I have my I/O box running through the TB3 card as well as my DAS and then have a NAS hooked into a 10GBe PCIE card)?
I'm sorry for question that are very basic and probably a little scattered, but my goal is to be better informed to make better decisions for future builds and/or setups. My setup is in my signature, but I'll happily post again if that isn't very visible
Thanks again, be well, and hope you're having a nice day!