Questions about CPU "Lanes"

Quelux · March 17, 2016

Hi, I have a few question concerning lanes in CPU's and how they work in interact with the parts of the build they affect. Basically, what are they, how do they interact with the build, and how many are in the Intel 6600K and how they may limit a 6600K build. Thank you.

HPWebcamAble · March 17, 2016

PCI-E is the name of the interface that a CPU uses to communicate with parts of your PC, most notably a discrete graphics card, sound card or network adapter.

The i5 6600K has a max of 16. For any Intel CPU, just google the name and go to the site that starts with 'ark.intel.com', it's a reference for intel products.

For a modern CPU like the 6600k, you don't need to worry about how many PCI-E lanes it has. There's enough that you won't use them all in a consumer desktop.

If you're wondering what CPU to get, it depends on what you'll be using the PC for.

sgloux3470 · March 17, 2016

PCI-E Lanes are used by various hardware like graphics cards, SSD's or other hardware.

Generally, 16 is enough for most people. If you want to use 3-4 GPU's or 2 GPu's with lots of other stuff (PCi-E SSD for example), you might want to go for enthusiast CPU's like Haswell-E or Skylake-E.

Frame Drops · March 17, 2016

PCI e express is a high speed data transfer expansion slot available in your mother board, It is use to communicate with other devices which need very high speed communication between your PC. The most common example is graphics card and PCI e SSD. Speed of SATA SSD ( which use SATA port ) is generally above 200 MB/s and upto 550 MB/s (read and write speed) but speed of PCI e SSD (ex: intel 750, it use gen3 x4 PCI e slot) capacity : 400 Gb ,800 GB, 1.2 Tb Read ( MB/s ) : 2,200 , 2,100 , 2,500 Write ( MB/s ) : 900 , 800 , 1200.

PCI e lanes : it is made up of two different signaling pair, one pair receive data & another pair transmit data. In simple , pci e lanes is made up of 4 wires, 2 for receiving and remaining 2 for transmitting. Now in writing technique x4, x = lanes & 4 = no. of lanes, in short x4 means : pci e expansion slot with 4 lanes.

CPU : Now no. of lanes a PC can handle depend on CPU, for example 6th gen CPU has 16 lanes, which means it can handle or use 16 lanes at a time. Why we need to know this? because it will determine how many expansion slot we can use or how many PCI e device we can connect to our PC and what will be there config . For ex: i7 6700k has 16 lanes which means max config are : 1 x16, 2 x8, 4 x4, 2 x4 + 1 x8.. etc. therefore if you are using 6th gen CPU that means you cant do more than 2 SLI because Nvidia GPU need at least x8 slot to work ( max config 2 x8) but in case of AMD you can do 4 way crossfire because AMD GPU need at least x4 slot to work ( max config 4 x4). And in terms of gaming performance there is little to no difference if your card is running on x8 or x16 lanes. i5 5820k has 28 lanes ( so you can do 3 way SLI : 3 x8 = 24 lanes & 4 way cross fire : 3 x8 + 1 x4 = 28 lanes). In short you config should be less or equal to the no of lanes your CPU can handle.