Have I hit max PCIE Lanes?

[spacecoyote18]

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:

 

1. Adding an I/O device (Blackmagic Ultra Studio mini 4K, requires Thunderbolt 3)
2. 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!

 

[Guest]

There's plenty of bandwidth there, you won't be saturating it. You're good.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

What full system sepcs do you have?

 

The lane count doesn't matter, its about how your board lets you use it. You can't just count lanes, as many boards leave them unused, or you can't use them all in your config.

 

If its the system in your descriptiong,

 

Then you have 2 pcie slots to use. ONe off the chipset(x4) and one from the cpu(x8), and drops the gpu to x8.

 

If I was configuring storage on your build, id use local storage for current projects(would be much faster and easier to setup a das or nas), then get a 10gbe nic and a switch, so you can attach a large nas or two that will store less frequentically used projects and files.

 

 

[spacecoyote18]

11 hours ago, ShrimpBrime said:

There's plenty of bandwidth there, you won't be saturating it. You're good.

 

Thank you ShrimpBrime!

 

 

11 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What full system sepcs do you have?

 

The lane count doesn't matter, its about how your board lets you use it. You can't just count lanes, as many boards leave them unused, or you can't use them all in your config.

 

If its the system in your descriptiong,

 

Then you have 2 pcie slots to use. ONe off the chipset(x4) and one from the cpu(x8), and drops the gpu to x8.

 

If I was configuring storage on your build, id use local storage for current projects(would be much faster and easier to setup a das or nas), then get a 10gbe nic and a switch, so you can attach a large nas or two that will store less frequentically used projects and files.

 

 

You are correct Electronics Wizardy, the machine specs I'm referring to are those in my signature.  That's a great point I didn't think of in regards to how my board utilizes the ports for traffic. 

 

You actually brought up my previous configuration for storage, hahaha.  I had (well I still have, they're just not connected at the moment) 3x 2TB Sandisk SSDs that I had running off the internal SATA ports on my board.  It was great, worked well, I just started to run out of space and ports (I'm starting to work with more 6K and dipping my toes into 8K footage on projects).  I think I will definitely look into the 10GBE nic upgrade and try to snag a Synology or Qnap for my less frequently used storage.  

 

Thank you so much for the response and the advice!