LIVE STREAM PC BUILD WITH LOTS OF PCIE SLOTS

[Cecil_Leonhart97]

Budget (including currency): Unknown.  Cost isn't necessarily an issue, but keeping costs low would be good.

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Live streaming in a professional setting (vMix, Facebook, YouTube)

Other details: House of Worship streaming, 1080p60 or 4k30.  

Upgrading from: HP Z420 Workstation (Intel Xeon E5-1620 0 = 3.6 GHz 4 Core, 16 GB RAM)

Already have: GPU (2080 Super, I think; in current build), capture card (Blackmagic Design DeckLink Quad HDMI PCIe Capture Card)

Needs: PCIe slot for GPU + 2x PCIe Gen 3.0 x8 slots

 

I work in IT and this build is for my job.  We do three house of worship live streams a week.  We use vMix as our software and stream to Facebook and YouTube.  Our current build is ancient, but it's been running okay for a really long time.  We mainly have two problems, 1) it's starting to act a little buggy and vMix is giving us CPU overload warnings, and 2) we need to install a second identical capture card into our system.  We are running three main cameras, two secondaries, and one HDMI capture to grab power points from our speakers.  Currently, we're only able to run one of the secondary cameras since we don't have enough inputs.  We do have extra single input capture cards, but I can only get one to work, so the 4+1 inputs leaves us one short.  We're planning on upgrading this summer and I need to spec out a build for my boss.  The issues is, I am having a really hard time finding a motherboard with a x16 PCIe and 2 x8 PCIe slots (or just 3 x16 slots).  I'd prefer to get something consumer level since I don't necessarily need that beefy of a cpu, I just need something that isn't ancient.  Most of the motherboards I find that have the PCIe slots we need are either Threadripper or Xeon boards, and I would really rather be on AM5 if possible.  

 

If you all have any suggestions for motherboards or just suggestions for my build in general, that would be great (like, should I use some premium PTM7950 from lttstore.com?). 

This is also my first time actually building a PC, so I'm really excited, but a little nervous.  I've been planning out personal builds for my Mom and I separately from this, but I've never actually built one before.

 

Thanks so much,

Cecil

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, Cecil_Leonhart97 said:

Budget (including currency): Unknown.  Cost isn't necessarily an issue, but keeping costs low would be good.

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Live streaming in a professional setting (vMix, Facebook, YouTube)

Other details: House of Worship streaming, 1080p60 or 4k30.  

Upgrading from: HP Z420 Workstation (Intel Xeon E5-1620 0 = 3.6 GHz 4 Core, 16 GB RAM)

Already have: GPU (2080 Super, I think; in current build), capture card (Blackmagic Design DeckLink Quad HDMI PCIe Capture Card)

Needs: PCIe slot for GPU + 2x PCIe Gen 3.0 x8 slots

 

I work in IT and this build is for my job.  We do three house of worship live streams a week.  We use vMix as our software and stream to Facebook and YouTube.  Our current build is ancient, but it's been running okay for a really long time.  We mainly have two problems, 1) it's starting to act a little buggy and vMix is giving us CPU overload warnings, and 2) we need to install a second identical capture card into our system.  We are running three main cameras, two secondaries, and one HDMI capture to grab power points from our speakers.  Currently, we're only able to run one of the secondary cameras since we don't have enough inputs.  We do have extra single input capture cards, but I can only get one to work, so the 4+1 inputs leaves us one short.  We're planning on upgrading this summer and I need to spec out a build for my boss.  The issues is, I am having a really hard time finding a motherboard with a x16 PCIe and 2 x8 PCIe slots (or just 3 x16 slots).  I'd prefer to get something consumer level since I don't necessarily need that beefy of a cpu, I just need something that isn't ancient.  Most of the motherboards I find that have the PCIe slots we need are either Threadripper or Xeon boards, and I would really rather be on AM5 if possible.  

 

If you all have any suggestions for motherboards or just suggestions for my build in general, that would be great (like, should I use some premium PTM7950 from lttstore.com?). 

This is also my first time actually building a PC, so I'm really excited, but a little nervous.  I've been planning out personal builds for my Mom and I separately from this, but I've never actually built one before.

 

Thanks so much,

Cecil

Do you need the slots to actually have electricalx16 x8 x8 lanes or just the physical slots?

[brob]

1 hour ago, Cecil_Leonhart97 said:

Budget (including currency): Unknown.  Cost isn't necessarily an issue, but keeping costs low would be good.

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Live streaming in a professional setting (vMix, Facebook, YouTube)

Other details: House of Worship streaming, 1080p60 or 4k30.  

Upgrading from: HP Z420 Workstation (Intel Xeon E5-1620 0 = 3.6 GHz 4 Core, 16 GB RAM)

Already have: GPU (2080 Super, I think; in current build), capture card (Blackmagic Design DeckLink Quad HDMI PCIe Capture Card)

Needs: PCIe slot for GPU + 2x PCIe Gen 3.0 x8 slots

 

I work in IT and this build is for my job.  We do three house of worship live streams a week.  We use vMix as our software and stream to Facebook and YouTube.  Our current build is ancient, but it's been running okay for a really long time.  We mainly have two problems, 1) it's starting to act a little buggy and vMix is giving us CPU overload warnings, and 2) we need to install a second identical capture card into our system.  We are running three main cameras, two secondaries, and one HDMI capture to grab power points from our speakers.  Currently, we're only able to run one of the secondary cameras since we don't have enough inputs.  We do have extra single input capture cards, but I can only get one to work, so the 4+1 inputs leaves us one short.  We're planning on upgrading this summer and I need to spec out a build for my boss.  The issues is, I am having a really hard time finding a motherboard with a x16 PCIe and 2 x8 PCIe slots (or just 3 x16 slots).  I'd prefer to get something consumer level since I don't necessarily need that beefy of a cpu, I just need something that isn't ancient.  Most of the motherboards I find that have the PCIe slots we need are either Threadripper or Xeon boards, and I would really rather be on AM5 if possible.  

 

If you all have any suggestions for motherboards or just suggestions for my build in general, that would be great (like, should I use some premium PTM7950 from lttstore.com?). 

This is also my first time actually building a PC, so I'm really excited, but a little nervous.  I've been planning out personal builds for my Mom and I separately from this, but I've never actually built one before.

 

Thanks so much,

Cecil

 

While a number of AM5 consumer motherboards offer three 16 lane slots, I'm not aware of any that wire these slots the way you need. Generally only 16 PCIe lanes from the CPU are used for one slot (x16) or two slots (x8x8). The remaining 16 wide slot(s) use 1 or 4 PCIe lanes from the chipset.

[Cecil_Leonhart97]

Physically and electrically, I need 1 x16 slot and 2 x8 slots.

[brob]

33 minutes ago, Cecil_Leonhart97 said:

Physically and electrically, I need 1 x16 slot and 2 x8 slots.

 

Very unlikely in a consumer AM5 motherboard.

 

AM5 Ryzen 9000 CPU have 28 PCIe lanes. Sixteen are for GPU and either dedicated to a single slot or split 8 lanes each to two occupied slots. Four lanes are for an NVMe drive. Four lanes are dedicated to communications with the chipset. And four lanes are available for other uses, often a second NVMe drive.

 

Chipsets support additional PCIe lanes but most are usually used for 4 and / or 1 lane expansion slots, m.2 connectors, and SATA ports.

[Cecil_Leonhart97]

Well, if consumer boards aren't on the table, what options do I have? What we have already isn't exactly consumer grade, so I'm open to more options. 

 

Also, I'm not locked into AM5, I just thought it seemed like a good platform for us. Again, this build doesn't necessarily need to all be business level stuff, I just have some oddly specific requirements that usually are only on business level equipment.

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, Cecil_Leonhart97 said:

Well, if consumer boards aren't on the table, what options do I have? What we have already isn't exactly consumer grade, so I'm open to more options. 

 

Also, I'm not locked into AM5, I just thought it seemed like a good platform for us. Again, this build doesn't necessarily need to all be business level stuff, I just have some oddly specific requirements that usually are only on business level equipment.

You are going to be limited to Xeon, Epyc or threadripper/threadripper pro. They are the only options that are x86 based with enough pcie lanes. Threadripper will give you the lanes with the added bonus of generally being faster clock speed than the xeon or epyc chips. But it doesn't come cheap...

[Cecil_Leonhart97]

On 5/17/2025 at 6:53 PM, Blue4130 said:

You are going to be limited to Xeon, Epyc or threadripper/threadripper pro. They are the only options that are x86 based with enough pcie lanes. Threadripper will give you the lanes with the added bonus of generally being faster clock speed than the xeon or epyc chips. But it doesn't come cheap...

Out of the three options, what would be the most budget friendly or at least bang for buck?  

 

Also, we already have an older Xeon cpu (Intel Xeon E5-1620 0), but I'm not that familiar with Xeon cpus, what would I be looking at for something 5-10 years newer?  It doesn't have to be top of the line, it just has to run what's needed well.