PCIe lanes

[Bubben]

The 1x slot works through the chipset. With that in mind, 16 lanes+4=20.

The 1x and 4x would be running through the chipset. You'd have 20Gbit provided through the chipset, that equals 5 pci-e 2.0 lanes.

[knightshade]

If you have the very top and the bottom 16x slots occupied then the top 1x slot will be the one that's left working. The bottom 16x and top 1x would run of the effective 5 pci-e 2.0 lanes provided though the chipset.

The reason why I say that you'll be pushing it is because there's only so much bandwidths available. In fact if I'm not mistaken you might end up saturating the 4x raid card, seeing as it'll be taking up 16Gbits of the 20Gbits available, and that's before you factor in anything else you might have connected.

If I might ask you though, have you seen any benchmarks comparing pci-e 16x vs 8x? You really wont be missing anything on a single gpu setup.

 

FWIW- the raid card right now is in a 4x PCIe 1.1 slot.... so if you mean "pushing it" might leave me restricted to a bit less than full PCIe 2.0 4x bandwidth that'd still be an improvement over the speeds it gives now... and I can't imagine a discrete audio card eats much bandwidth anyway... (likely to be a Creative Labs Sound Blaster ZX, if I decide the onboard AC1150 isn't up to snuff)

 

 

 

On video- I agree I won't be missing anything right _now_ if the card runs at 8x (esp on a 3.0 slot)... from what I've seen any reasonably priced card was just barely pushing the limits of 8x 2.0... but in 2 years? That might be another story, and I don't intend to build another system for a while.

 

I used to upgrade at least annually.... that stopped about 5 years ago as PCs had finally gotten 'fast enough' for most of what I do with em... and switching to an SSD and a vid card bump halfway through the 5 years fixed anything else...  So I'm expecting a similar life cycle here- and 2-3 years from now I'd expect good cards WOULD be restricted by 8x 3.0

[Bubben]

FWIW- the raid card right now is in a 4x PCIe 1.1 slot.... so if you mean "pushing it" might leave me restricted to a bit less than full PCIe 2.0 4x bandwidth that'd still be an improvement over the speeds it gives now... and I can't imagine a discrete audio card eats much bandwidth anyway... (likely to be a Creative Labs Sound Blaster ZX, if I decide the onboard AC1150 isn't up to snuff)

 

 

 

On video- I agree I won't be missing anything right _now_ if the card runs at 8x (esp on a 3.0 slot)... from what I've seen any reasonably priced card was just barely pushing the limits of 8x 2.0... but in 2 years? That might be another story, and I don't intend to build another system for a while.

 

I used to upgrade at least annually.... that stopped about 5 years ago as PCs had finally gotten 'fast enough' for most of what I do with em... and switching to an SSD and a vid card bump halfway through the 5 years fixed anything else...  So I'm expecting a similar life cycle here- and 2-3 years from now I'd expect good cards WOULD be restricted by 8x 3.0

If it's a pci-e 1.0 card then you'll be absolutely fine.

I don't know all that much about raid but wouldn't you be better of using the onboard 6Gbit sata if it's a pci-e 1 card, or do you actually get 8Gbit/s out of it?

 

edit: Or is that 6,4Gbit after encoding?

Edited June 7, 2013 by Bubben

[knightshade]

If it's a pci-e 1.0 card then you'll be absolutely fine.

I don't know all that much about raid but wouldn't you be better of using the onboard 6Gbit sata if it's a pci-e 1 card, or do you actually get 8Gbit/s out of it?

 

edit: Or is that 6,4Gbit after encoding?

 

To be clear- the RAID card is PCI 2.0... it's just living in a 1.1 4x slot presently because the motherboard only supports PCIe 1.1

 

So I mean if I only get 75% of the 4x 2.0 bandwidth, it'd still be getting 25% more than it gets now.

 

I can't use onboard because it's an e-SATA card with port multiplication.  It has 4 e-sata ports.  Each port supports 4 hard drives.

 

I've got 4 2TB drives in an external esata enclosure as a RAID5 array attached to port 1 on the card, and 4 1.5 TB drives in an external esata enclosure as a RAID5 array on port 2.

 

(and will likely add at least 1 more enclosure at some point).

 

No way to support anywhere near that many with the onboard stuff.

[Bubben]

To be clear- the RAID card is PCI 2.0... it's just living in a 1.1 4x slot presently because the motherboard only supports PCIe 1.1

 

So I mean if I only get 75% of the 4x 2.0 bandwidth, it'd still be getting 25% more than it gets now.

 

I can't use onboard because it's an e-SATA card with port multiplication.  It has 4 e-sata ports.  Each port supports 4 hard drives.

 

I've got 4 2TB drives in an external esata enclosure as a RAID5 array attached to port 1 on the card, and 4 1.5 TB drives in an external esata enclosure as a RAID5 array on port 2.

 

(and will likely add at least 1 more enclosure at some point).

 

No way to support anywhere near that many with the onboard stuff.

 

Oh, sorry my focus was starting to waver but I've slept now.

 

I'm still actually trying to wrap my head around how much bandwidth is used by add in cards and such. I assume that if you were moving a file over your raid (assuming the drives were fast enough) then you would be using the entire bandwidth of the 4 out of 5 available lanes, right? If on top of that you were moving something from or to the raid via a usb 3 device, wouldn't you then be hitting the ceiling of 20Gbit/s in one direction?

 

I get that this might not be the end of the world, but I'm merely curious is all.

 

4,2 TB, those aren't consumer level are they?

[knightshade]

Oh, sorry my focus was starting to waver but I've slept now.

 

I'm still actually trying to wrap my head around how much bandwidth is used by add in cards and such. I assume that if you were moving a file over your raid (assuming the drives were fast enough) then you would be using the entire bandwidth of the 4 out of 5 available lanes, right? If on top of that you were moving something from or to the raid via a usb 3 device, wouldn't you then be hitting the ceiling of 20Gbit/s in one direction?

 

I get that this might not be the end of the world, but I'm merely curious is all.

 

4,2 TB, those aren't consumer level are they?

 

Drives are all Samsung 5900 rpm drives (from before they got bought out)- 4x HD154UI for the 1.5s and 4x HD204UI, all 3GB sata.... they're primarily used for media storage and streaming around the house so they don't need to be super speedy, just very reliable as even full BR quality video is only 54 mb/sec... only time I do anything "faster" is when moving data on, off, or between the arrays... so if the worst that happens is that when I am moving a couple hundred gigs from one place to another around the disks it goes a bit slower that's fine.

[Bubben]

Drives are all Samsung 5900 rpm drives (from before they got bought out)- 4x HD154UI for the 1.5s and 4x HD204UI, all 3GB sata.... they're primarily used for media storage and streaming around the house so they don't need to be super speedy, just very reliable as even full BR quality video is only 54 mb/sec... only time I do anything "faster" is when moving data on, off, or between the arrays... so if the worst that happens is that when I am moving a couple hundred gigs from one place to another around the disks it goes a bit slower that's fine.

 

I suppose you wouldn't even necessarily hit the 16Gbit/s limit, depending on the drives and the raid card, so you're probably right in that it wouldn't be a problem. And even if it did hit it, it wouldn't be a big deal as you say. Still learning here.

 

Good luck with the computer : )