i7 4790K Help

[EmeraldKiwi]

So my friend told me that the 4790k only supports 16 PCI lanes, which he claimed would mean that if I were to run two, say, 970s in SLI on my board, no other PCI expansion slots would be utilized, as in, no more PCI slots would function. I'm a bit concerned about this. First off, is this true? Next, since my board (MAXIMUS VII Hero) only has 3 PCI 3.0 lanes, would that mean if I were to run two way SLI then the third 3.0 slot would become useless no matter what I had in that last slot? I'm a bit confused as you can see, but I'm investigating this because I don't want to get two 970s and have all the rest of the PCI slots not work. Thanks for your guys' help!

[AlwaysFSX]

Unless there's a PLX chip, than if you're already saturating all 16 lanes with Nvidia cards then other slots will be unusable since Nvidia requires an 8x slot or higher to run in SLI.

 

You have 3 slots, not lanes on your board. Yes if you run SLI 970s that last slot will become useless, downside of PCIe lanes. Small chance you'd ever use it though.

[dragoon20005]

 

 

the GPU uses the lanes from the CPU/Northbridge

 

the other devices like the SATA and USB

 

uses the Z97/SouthBridge

[Ultragunner]

So the OP will still be able to run SLI?

 

I'm a bit concerned about this as well. I'm also using the Maximus VII Hero board with the 4790k + a single MSI GTX 980 + a wifi PCI wifi card.

 

Will I still be able to run 980 SLI in this config., even putting more PCI expansions on the mobo?

 

Anyone please do clarify this for us