PCIE Lanes problem - Really?

[Finders]

Hello guys, 

I have a friend who presented me a weird doubt about a build. Could you guys please help me?

 

He's planning to use a i7-6700k, and a z170-a (asus) motheroard, with:

1 m2 ssd samsung 950 pro 

2 850 evo sata3 ssd

2 2tb hdd drives

a gtx 980 ti

dedicated sound and networking card 

 

The question is: is all of this possible without having a bottleneck (on the gpu) with the 6700k, and using a Asus z170-a motherboard?

 Is really the build above going to be a problem for the 6700k, in therms of pci-e lanes?

 

Thanks againg, guys

[Guest]

It will be fine.

[TidaLWaveZ]

9 minutes ago, Finders said:

Hello guys, 

I have a friend who presented me a weird doubt about a build. Could you guys please help me?

 

He's planning to use a i7-6700k, and a z170-a (asus) motheroard, with:

1 m2 ssd samsung 950 pro 

2 850 evo sata3 ssd

2 2tb hdd drives

a gtx 980 ti

dedicated sound and networking card 

 

The question is: is all of this possible without having a bottleneck (on the gpu) with the 6700k, and using a Asus z170-a motherboard?

 Is really the build above going to be a problem for the 6700k, in therms of pci-e lanes?

 

Thanks againg, guys

Yes, this is perfectly fine and no, you will not have a problem with PCIe lanes.

 

The m.2 doesn't use gpu PCIe lanes, it uses auxiliary lanes provided by the MOBO

None of the other hard drives use PCIe lanes

Even if the sound card and networking card were to take up CPU PCIe lanes, you could put the GPU on 8x mode which shows virtually no performance difference from 16x.

[Finders]

1 minute ago, lee32uk said:

It will be fine.

If he's gooing to use the creative sound blaster zxr and a random lan network adapter, how many lanes will be remaining to be used by the 980ti? still x16?

[lh99]

7 minutes ago, Finders said:

If he's gooing to use the creative sound blaster zxr and a random lan network adapter, how many lanes will be remaining to be used by the 980ti? still x16?

okay, so the 950 pro will use 4 pcie x3.0 lanes, the sound blaster zxr and lan adapter will use pcie 2.0 lanes and so arent effectively supplied by the cpu, so you don´t have to take them into consideration, so 8 pcie 3.0 lanes are there for the 980 ti what is more than enough

[Dzzope]

The z170-A uses PCI-e lanes from PCI_3 when in pci-e mode (it's in sata mode by default.. Change this before installing the drive) where it shares with sata express.

 

All in you will still have minimum pci-e 3.0 x8.. Which is fine for a 980Ti but might start being a problem in a few years as the bandwidth needed increases with subsequent GPU upgrades.

Not sure if we have reached the stage of x8 being a bottleneck to a single card yet. Would love to see some tests.

 

Why is he adding a nic?

[Finders]

18 minutes ago, Dzzope said:

The z170-A uses PCI-e lanes from PCI_3 when in pci-e mode (it's in sata mode by default.. Change this before installing the drive) where it shares with sata express.

 

All in you will still have minimum pci-e 3.0 x8.. Which is fine for a 980Ti but might start being a problem in a few years as the bandwidth needed increases with subsequent GPU upgrades.

Not sure if we have reached the stage of x8 being a bottleneck to a single card yet. Would love to see some tests.

 

Why is he adding a nic?

So the 980ti in 8x mode won't be a problem. Thanks all guys. 

 

But: what is nic? If you intend the network adapter i don't really know: i told him the motherboard has integrated lan, but he refuses to use it...  Anyway, what about switching to the i7-5930k and the x99 motherboard? I know, it cost more, but, correct me if i'm wrong, it's better for future upgradability, and it have 40 pci-e lanes to spare.. ideas?

[Guest]

The link below shows the block diagram for the Z170-A. 

 

 

http://techreport.com/review/28737/asus-z170-a-motherboard-reviewed

 

[Dzzope]

on pci-e lanes, yes.. but it's an older platform and even it has some downsides like using pci-e lanes for USB3.1 cos the chipset doesn't support it nativly. That said, with 40 lanes and Nvidia basically dropping tri-quad sli.. it is better if your using NVME drives, dual gpus and other add in cards in intensive tasks.

 

He'll really be fine for more than a few years even at 4k.. but the pci-e lanes will probably be the cause of the next platform upgrade with the spec here.

 

But that said.. would he be better saving the extra and then upgrading sooner or spending and waiting longer...

 

I generally go for smaller sooner upgrades when I need to.. you don't pay top price and you stay with modern features.

 

/edit

I stand corrected on the m2.

[Finders]

4 minutes ago, Dzzope said:

on pci-e lanes, yes.. but it's an older platform and even it has some downsides like using pci-e lanes for USB3.1 cos the chipset doesn't support it nativly. That said, with 40 lanes and Nvidia basically dropping tri-quad sli.. it is better if your using NVME drives, dual gpus and other add in cards in intensive tasks.

 

He'll really be fine for more than a few years even at 4k.. but the pci-e lanes will probably be the cause of the next platform upgrade with the spec here.

 

But that said.. would he be better saving the extra and then upgrading sooner or spending and waiting longer...

 

I generally go for smaller sooner upgrades when I need to.. you don't pay top price and you stay with modern features.

I agree with you: he's not really gaming as much (only gta V sometimes). The 980 ti was mainly for rendering purposes. Anyway, i think he can change the platform when needed (maybe in 2 or 1 and a half years), and keeping the other components. That card is a beast: he shouldn't have problems at all.