how do pcie lanes work exactly?

[PaulKolby]

so i have a 2600k which has a max of 16 pcie lanes according to intel's website, and i have an Intel dz77bh-55k motherboard and a gtx 780 ti, now if i were to get a pcie 1x wireless card would my gpu only run at pcie 8x?

[manikyath]

in most (if not all) cases the 1x slots are fed trough chipset, and not directly off of cpu lanes.

 

its mostly the 16x, 8x, and 4x (although sometimes 4x comes from chipset i believe, not sure on this one) that come from the cpu directly.

[mikat]

so i have a 2600k which has a max of 16 pcie lanes according to intel's website, and i have an Intel dz77bh-55k motherboard and a gtx 780 ti, now if i were to get a pcie 1x wireless card would my gpu only run at pcie 8x?

it would not impact performance (not even sure if it would go down to 8x)

[typographie]

 

Here's Intel's block diagram for the Z77 platform. It shows the CPU provides 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes which will be used for graphics, and the chipset provides 8 additional PCIe 2.0 lanes.

 

So yes, you should be able to install a wireless card without cutting into the lanes used by the graphics card.