PCI-E Lanes Question

[Ronin64]

Hi, I have a question regarding how PCI-E lanes are shared and used.

 

I bought a Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 3 for my first build and am a little confused how PCI-E lanes on the board work. I plan on getting a 6600K which has 16 PCI-E lanes max, but the motherboard has 2-way SLI, two m.2 slots, and USB 3.1. So would I not be able to use either of the m.2 slots for SSDs or USB 3.1 ports if I'm using SLI? Since both GPUs will use 8x each, there won't be any left of either of the m.2 slots since they need 4x and the USB 3.1 ports need 2x.

 

Sorry if there is an obvious answer, I just want to learn more. Thanks.

[exercutor5]

The SLI part uses PCIe lanes from the CPU. The rest of the ports like the M.2 PCIe slot would use PCIe lanes from the chipset. The Z170 chipset itself has an additional 20 lanes for other stuff.

[KezzaMcFezza]

Thats a very good question. I'm pretty sure you should be fine with M.2 drive as it would seem ridiculous if you couldn't use if cus of the CPU lanes

 

Hope this helps

[Tedster]

5 minutes ago, Ronin64 said:

Hi, I have a question regarding how PCI-E lanes are shared and used.

 

I bought a Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 3 for my first build and am a little confused how PCI-E lanes on the board work. I plan on getting a 6600K which has 16 PCI-E lanes max, but the motherboard has 2-way SLI, two m.2 slots, and USB 3.1. So would I not be able to use either of the m.2 slots for SSDs or USB 3.1 ports if I'm using SLI? Since both GPUs will use 8x each, there won't be any left of either of the m.2 slots since they need 4x and the USB 3.1 ports need 2x.

 

Sorry if there is an obvious answer, I just want to learn more. Thanks.

You're confusing us some.

 

Are you buying one graphics card or two?

[Moonzy]

your motherboard will most likely reserve the cpu's pcie lanes to the two 16x pcie slot

 

the rest of the pcie slot is running off the chipset so its fine

as for m.2 and usb 3.1, they're running off the chipset too

using the m.2 normally disables two sata port

 

the exact details can be found in your motherboard's manual, what i said is just what most motherboards do

[Ronin64]

Ah, so the chipset has pci-e lanes too, I did not know that. Thanks again and I think I need to read some more info about what chipsets actually do.