How many PCIe slots do you really need?

[Shmael1053]

Halo Infinite and Battlefield 2042 are here, and after several years of faithful service, the i7-4770 and 1050Ti in my office-PC-turned-gaming-PC is starting to show its age pretty badly. I'm finally going to build myself a new up-to-date gaming PC, but I'm having some trouble choosing a motherboard.
I live in a hot climate, so even ignoring the minor performance differences, I've decided I'm definitely going AMD over Intel for thermal reasons alone.
Thing is, I also have a pretty small living space and desk space (my desk is only 19" deep) so I'm trying to keep my build small, avoiding full-size ATX motherboards and only looking at micro-ATX, mini-DTX, and mini-ITX boards. The practical differences between X570 and B550 are a whole other rabbit hole (if anyone has thoughts on whether X570 is worth it or not, I'd love to hear it!) but the main difference between the form factors other than physical size is that micro-ATX seems to be the only one of the three sizes to offer any boards with more than a single PCIe slot, x16 or otherwise. Something about that is extremely off-putting to me. I use two PCIe slots on my current PC, but then again, that's only because it's an old office PC that doesn't have built-in WiFi like every decent gaming motherboard now does. I can't think of anything I would need a second slot for on a modern full-featured board, but I would much rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

So this is equal parts opinion poll and survey:
How many PCIe slots do you use on your gaming rig?
Is only having one slot a severe restriction, even on a high-end motherboard with built-in networking and NVMe slots?
And, as a bonus question if you feel like answering, because it's another thing I've been struggling with, is X570 worth choosing over B550 for a smaller build?

[SorryBella]

1 minute ago, Shmael1053 said:

How many PCIe slots do you use on your gaming rig?

1. most people needing 2nd nowadays not to have wifi, but to add more USB ports or a faster NICs as 2.5 gigabit NICs falls in price. X570 and certain B550 motherboards have wifi 6 and Bluetooth 5 built in, in accordance to the chipset standard.

3 minutes ago, Shmael1053 said:

Is only having one slot a severe restriction, even on a high-end motherboard with built-in networking and NVMe slots?

Again, not really. Most USB hubs and dongles solves the issue of IO without hitch, so 2nd one really falls off favor even in mATX motherboard.

5 minutes ago, Shmael1053 said:

is X570 worth choosing over B550 for a smaller build?

Depends on what you need on feature sets. As i say before, X570 boards usually always include a wifi 6 and bluetooth 5 chip, but besides that its hard to justify them.

[Mister Woof]

Generally useful for

 

wifi cards

video capture cards

sound cards

m.2 slot cards

usb port cards

[dizmo]

Choosing AMD over Intel because of "thermals" makes no sense; they both use the same amount of power under load, and are generally around the same temp. This isn't true in stress tests necessarily, but gaming doesn't reach those kinds of temperatures.

 

You can include polls in your post when you're writing it. There's a tab at the top in the creation mode.

 

I wouldn't get an X570 board simply because of the small fan on it. Don't need the additional point of failure, which was quite high when small fans like that have been used in the past. As others have pointed out, there are tons of uses for the extra slots, but most can be avoided by simply purchasing the proper motherboard (enough USB ports, on board WiFi, enough m.2 spots, etc). It's worth noting that most of these things can also be done over USB.

 

I currently have an mATX board, but am building an ITX system. I'm not really that worried about losing the extra slot, as it's only going to be used for a year and a bit, and then I'll upgrade to a 12th gen Intel mATX/ATX system in a very compact case so that I have space for a sound card.

[Kc7vwc]

I've been using mITX for almost 10 years & love it. The space savings is great. 

Was on Intel Z97 chipset before moving to Ryzen B450.  

 

Think my current board has 6 USB 3 ports in back, 2 up front. 

Audio is 5.1 capable, but I prefer good stereo headphones anyway. I haven't liked any soundcards since Creative gave Aureal the shaft & stagnated the audio market. 

Wi-Fi is a damn nice feature to have as backup and 1Gbps Ethernet is still more than enough, considering how sparse Gigabit internet still is for the masses.