I'm scared of PCIe lanes

[Munchboy]

Hey guys,
as the title would suggest, I am now scared of PCIe lanes. Never in my life have I had to deal with something like this until recently.
So, as far as I understand, a Ryzen 5 2600 has 20 PCIe lanes. 16 of those would go to the GPU which leaves 4. A M.2 NVMe takes all of those 4 which leaves me with 0, correct?
I learned that the hard way when I bough myself an expansion M.2 SSD (already had 2 SATA SSDs and a HDD) and suddenly 1 of my SSDs was gone from the system. This doesn't makes sense to me though, because as far as I read, SATA SSDs take up 1 lane (?), which should mean that with 0 lanes left after the GPU and M.2, none of my older SSDs should be recognized.
I have already given up on M.2 in my system and am rocking good old SATA and I am very happy with the performance. I am though thinking of putting a 1TB M.2 SSD with a HDD in my GFs sisters new computer. I am giving her my Ryzen 2600, the question would be, can I expand with another SSD down the line if it's needed, or is that the limit I have with that setup?

[C0stanza]

Not positive what’s going on but I don’t think a SATA SSD necessa

[Munchboy]

1 minute ago, C0stanza said:

Not positive what’s going on but I don’t think a SATA SSD necessa

I knew it was a bit all over the place but just wanted to share my struggle xd

[C0stanza]

1 minute ago, C0stanza said:

Not positive what’s going on but I don’t think a SATA SSD necessa

Accidentally hit post, ignore this its all trash and SATA SSDs can use PCIE lanes like you said

[C0stanza]

Just now, Munchboy said:

I knew it was a bit all over the place but just wanted to share my struggle xd

No thats on me lol, I was trying to figure out why this could happen but at the moment I’m as confused as you are. Hopefully someone comes in with a good answer

[Electronics Wizardy]

What motherboard do you have? The manual will tell you what ports or slots disable other ones. 

 

There is also a good amount more pcie lanes from the chipset that is often used for things like m.2 drives.

[mariushm]

Not really.

 

Ryzen 2600 has 24 pci-e lanes : 

* 16 are dedicated for video cards and depending on chipset on motherboard they may be split into 2 pci-e x8 slots

* 4 are intended to be used by M.2 connector (though manufacturer is not obligated to use them like that, pretty much all do)

* 4 are connecting the chipset to the processor so they're already used for chipset

 

The chipset then contains multiple USB controllers, SATA controller or controllers, and also contains a pci-e controller which creates more pci-e lanes.

For example, the B450 chipset creates 6 pci-e 2.0 lanes which may be routed to an extra m.2 controller, an extra pci-e x4 slot, multiple pci-e x1 slots etc.

The x470 had 8 pci-e 2.0 lanes if my memory is correct.

 

The B550 chipset upgrades the pci-e controller inside the chipset to support pci-e 3.0 lanes and I think the number is raised to 10 pci-e lanes.

 

The M.2 connector may support NVME (pci-e) SSDs,  AHCI (sata) SSDs, or both. Often, the motherboard manufacturer just routes the wires from a SATA connector to the M.2 connector, so if you plug a SATA SSD into a m.2 connector, the SATA connector is no longer usable, because you can't have two SSDs use the same wires to the SATA controller inside the chipset.

 

So you have to look in the manual to see which sata ports are enabled and which ones may be disabled when you use M.2 connectors, or you use AHCI (sata) M.2 drives.

 

 

[Munchboy]

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What motherboard do you have? The manual will tell you what ports or slots disable other ones. 

 

There is also a good amount more pcie lanes from the chipset that is often used for things like m.2 drives.

If you're still curious, its a MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC

[Zagna]

As the manual says, ports 5&6 are disabled with M.2 device so you can still use ports 1-4.