PCIe Lanes

[ep10]

Hey guys,

 

I'd like to apologize in advance since some of you may have seen or answered this question a lot but I was hoping to get a clarification on PCI Express lanes. Now, from my understanding, the PCIe lanes originate from the processor as well as the chipset. The lanes on a microprocessor are almost exclusively dedicated to graphics depending on the processor model and corresponding number of lanes while PCIe lanes on a chipset are dedicated to other components like m.2 SSDs.

 

Let's look at a scenario with the sample system in mind:-

 

Intel Core i9-9900K Processor

Gigabyte Z390 AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE Motherboard

Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX™ 2080 Ti XTREME WATERFORCE 11G Graphics Card

ASUS STRIX RAID DLX Sound Card

GSkill Trident Z RGB DDR4 3200Mhz RAM (64GB)

Intel® Optane™ Memory Series M.2 80MM (32GB)

Corsair Force Series™ MP510 M.2 SSD (1,920GB)

Samsung SSD 860 PRO (4TB) 

Seagate BarraCuda Pro Class HDD (14TB)

 

In this configuration, the Optane memory stick is there to accelerate the speed of the BarraCuda Pro and from what I understand, Intel has recently enabled functionality on Optane for supplementary HDDs and is not exclusive to Primary OS drives like it used to be. The Corsair MP510 is the O.S. drive obviously

 

Now, my questions are

 

1) Where would the ASUS sound card and Intel Optane memory utilize PCIe lanes from? Would this be from the Processor or Chipset?

 

2) And is my understanding that the Corsair MP510 would use PCIe lanes from the Z390 chipset, correct?

 

3) If any of the other components utilize CPU PCIe lanes, will this bump PCIe x16 functionality down to x8 for the graphics card? If so, will this considerably reduce graphics performance?

 

I'd like to clarify that this is purely for my understanding and I'd really appreciate any help. Thank you.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Sound card and optane both use the chipset lanes.

 

Only the gpu uses the pcie lanes here. the cpu pcie lanes only connect to the top 2 x16 pcie lanes.

 

Why the 860 pro? Id get the evo, just as fast, and cheaper. You probably don't need the endurance.

 

Id also skip on optane personally., look at other caching solutions if you really want, but what are you storing on that hdd.

[ep10]

Well, this is purely theoretical of course. The Barracuda Pro would be used for back up storage and act as a transfer platform to an external NAS server.

 

Oh really? No considerable increase in performance with Optane huh? Well, I guess speed primarily matters when it comes to loading the O.S.

 

The 860 Pro would be utilized for installing programs but you're right, the Evo would be just fine. This is for my knowledge.

 

I appreciate the response though, Thank you.

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, ep10 said:

Well, this is purely theoretical of course. The Barracuda Pro would be used for back up storage and act as a transfer platform to an external NAS server.

 

Oh really? No considerable increase in performance with Optane huh? Well, I guess speed primarily matters when it comes to loading the O.S.

 

The 860 Pro would be utilized for installing programs but you're right, the Evo would be just fine. This is for my knowledge.

 

I appreciate the response though, Thank you.

optane really helps with commonly used random files, like a os, programs and games. It won't help with backups(the optane cache gets filled up fast, and hdds are still pretty fast at sequential uses like backups. 

 

 

[RogueLizard]

21 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

look at other caching solutions if you really want,

caching is literally the worst idea ever. Just get an SSHD, it has a built in SSD cache

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, RogueLizard said:

caching is literally the worst idea ever. Just get an SSHD, it has a built in SSD cache

Not really. Caching is used in a lot of places in computers as it can have a huge performance difference. Its not the best for every use, but can be great for many disk uses.