Help me understand lanes please

[Casual Cube]

My parts arrive next week. i5-8500 and Gtx 1080 on A Gigabyte H310M S2H. Now I also ordered one of them pcie 4x USB 3.0 cards. Also, I'm dumb when it comes to lanes. I know to things so far - my CPU supports 16 lanes and that guy can run both 8 and 16. What does this mean for my rig? If some one could take the time to explain lanes effects to me, i would appreciateb that a lot!

TY

[Mira Yurizaki]

The motherboard you chose (https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/H310M-S2H-rev-10#kf) won't physically fit a PCI Express x4 card in anything other than the PCI Express x16 slot.

 

Either way, the PCI Express slots that aren't the x16 one use the chipset's lanes, not the ones from the CPU.

[Casual Cube]

[Casual Cube]

3 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

the PCI Express slots that aren't the x16 one use the chipset's lanes

There are multiple types of lanes from the cpu's?

[Dedayog]

8 minutes ago, Casual Cube said:

They mean you'll be more than fine, don't worry about it.

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 minutes ago, Casual Cube said:

There are multiple types of lanes from the cpu's?

No. The H310 chipset provides 6 PCIe express lanes for periperhals. A lane each goes to the two x1 slots on your motherboard.

 

But again, you cannot physically fit a PCI Express x4 card in one of those x1 slots unless you're willing to modify the slots.

[Casual Cube]

2 minutes ago, jstudrawa said:

They mean you'll be more than fine, don't worry about it.

Ah thank you. I just checked the orders. It's not a 4x card for the extra USB. It's 2x. Thank the Lord. So am I to understand that the 16x slot usually meant for the GPU don't take all up the cpu's 16? And if hypothetically I put a gpu in a 8x slot, what changes occur? Thank you once again!

 

[brob]

The H310 motherboard is an unfortunate choice for an i5-8500 GTX 1080 system.

 

The cpu has 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes. On your motherboard all 16 lanes are wired to the x16 slot. This is the slot in which the gpu must be mounted. (With better chipsets the 16 cpu lanes are often split between two or three x16 slots. In these cases when two slots are occupied they will each use 8 lanes. On motherboards that support 3 x16 slots, when all three are occupied one will use 8 lanes and the other two will each use 4 lanes.)

 

In PCIe using fewer lanes just affects the speed at which data moves to and from the card. At the moment, gpu performance is not really affected by slots using only 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes.

 

The two x1 slots on the motherboard use PCIe 2.0 lanes supplied by the chipset.

 

What is the USB card model purchased?

[Casual Cube]

Hi Brob, So I didnt see your (helpful) reply previously. I have currently refunded the USB expansion and went with the same i5-8500 but with an Nvme 3.0 x 4 drive and an MSI B360 PRO-VD. Is this still a bad choice? I am also considering cchanging to a Ryzen 5-2600+A320M combo. Will this be recommended over the Intel combo? (The Nvme would stay in both options ideally)

[brob]

While I would choose an H370 motherboard, there is nothing inherently wrong with the B360 board you have picked.

 

A Ryzen 4 2600 is better paired with a B450 motherboard. If you do go with an A320 motherboard check first that it has an updated BIOS compatible with the 2xxx cpu.

 

At stock the i5-8500 is a bit better for gaming than the Ryzen 2600. However, with a decent motherboard one can overclock the Ryzen to make it quite competitive.