Pcie Lane Restrictions

[Meragun]

I'd be very greatful if someone would clear up this compatibility dilemma. If i pair a 5820k (28 pcie lanes) with an Asus X99 II (https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/X99-A-II/specifications/), would i be able to 2-way sli down the road and still use the m.2 port. I think the M.2 runs off the cpu and not the chipset, so I'm wondering what speed it would bring the card down to (x8 or so), or if I'd even be able to use the M.2 and sli at all.

[Oshino Shinobu]

It should run off the chipset. Even if it doesn't, the cards would likely only be taken down to PCIe 3.0 8x, which wouldn't impact performance whatsoever. 

[Skiiwee29]

The PCIe lanes from the CPU are strictly reserved for GPU's only. All others will pull there lanes from the Chipset. You will have no issues with running an m.2 SSD and SLI graphics. 

[Meragun]

Thank you for the clarification. I have been reading a lot about pice lanes, graphics card slot saturation, and motherboard slot bandwidth til my head is a little woozy. I hope I can become a little more versed in the subject to make some educated decisions about my next build.