X99 PCIE Lanes - 6800k or 6850k

[Neil Bennett]

Literally my first post in any forum, ever... lucky you.

 

I'm planning out my first serious build and I'm not sure how many PCIE Lanes I'm going to need for my usage. I've decided on the parts I'm going to use (admittedly some of my choices are a bit 'because I can', but if you have any feedback on my choices, I'd be keen to hear them!), other than of course for the CPU; I'm not sure whether I need the 40 PCIE Lanes that the 6850k offers, or whether I can get away with the poultry 28 that you get from the 6800k. Here's my build https://au.pcpartpicker.com/user/harpersneil/saved/jfRvK8 

 

Will I have enough PCIE Lanes to have the NVME M.2 Storage, a second 1080 in the future AND be able to use the included (with the Asus X99 Deluxe Mobo) Thunderbolt 3 Card?

 

Although for now I've got enough (at least I think so!?!) in the future I'm looking to build my own NAS (currently using a Synology DS414), and I'd like to set it up with Thunderbolt 3 so I can get massively improved transfer speeds - the Asus X99 Deluxe board has a add-in card with TB3 on it - presumably I can use this??

 

Any help/advice that anyone is able to offer is very much appreciated!

 

 

Seems a bit obvious, but this really helped!! - 

 

 

[Droidbot]

A) wait for ryzen, better value.

B) x16/x8 for GPUs. PCI-E x4 3.0 is spared, use it on either NVMe or TB3. Extra 8 PCI-E 2.0 lanes from the chipset are available as well. Don't quote me on this, the spec is not well defined. 

 

[QuantumBit]

I think so it has 4 PCI-E lanes

[Simon771]

Well 40 lanes would be ideal if you plan to have 2x GPUs + NVMe ssd.

But it would work just fine even on 28 lanes. Each GPU would take x8 lanes and you would still have 12 left for other things.

There isn't huge difference in running GPUs on 8 vs 16 lanes. At least not when it comes to gaming, bitcoing mining, rendering etc.

I think someone did decent review about that and it did affect performance a bit, but not by more than 5% if I remember correctly.

 

But if you can afford to pay a bit more, get 6850k for sure, just to be on the safe side.

[Neil Bennett]

19 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

A) wait for ryzen, better value.

B) x16/x8 for GPUs. PCI-E x4 3.0 is spared, use it on either NVMe or TB3. Extra 8 PCI-E 2.0 lanes from the chipset are available as well. Don't quote me on this, the spec is not well defined. 

 

Thanks for replying!

 

A) Ryzen - you're right, but I'm a p*ssy and I'm too scared to take on AMD when I'm so famiiar with Nvidia/Intel.

B) First thing I need to do I guess is understand what the consequences are of running on 16x vs 8x. Also, can you explain what you mean by "PCI-E x4 3.0 is spared". I was going to use the M.2 port for the NVME drive... maybe do a RAID array with a NVME - will I have enough lanes for that?!?

[Neil Bennett]

27 minutes ago, QuantumBit said:

I think so it has 4 PCI-E lanes

Thanks for the reply!

 

I didn't actually mean the physical PCI-E ports on the MOBO. I meant the lanes which are dependant on the CPU. The 6800k has 28 Lanes, the 6850k and above have 40.

 

Hopefully you and I can both learn some more if we stick around on this thread!

[Neil Bennett]

3 minutes ago, Simon771 said:

Well 40 lanes would be ideal if you plan to have 2x GPUs + NVMe ssd.

But it would work just fine even on 28 lanes. Each GPU would take x8 lanes and you would still have 12 left for other things.

There isn't huge difference in running GPUs on 8 vs 16 lanes. At least not when it comes to gaming, bitcoing mining, rendering etc.

I think someone did decent review about that and it did affect performance a bit, but not by more than 5% if I remember correctly.

 

But if you can afford to pay a bit more, get 6850k for sure, just to be on the safe side.

Thanks heaps for the reply!

 

Sounds like solid advice mate. The problem I have, the more things I think of that I might want to do one day... I'm going to end up with a Quad Zeon Build at this rate!!

[Droidbot]

8 hours ago, Neil Bennett said:

Thanks for replying!

 

A) Ryzen - you're right, but I'm a p*ssy and I'm too scared to take on AMD when I'm so famiiar with Nvidia/Intel.

B) First thing I need to do I guess is understand what the consequences are of running on 16x vs 8x. Also, can you explain what you mean by "PCI-E x4 3.0 is spared". I was going to use the M.2 port for the NVME drive... maybe do a RAID array with a NVME - will I have enough lanes for that?!?

But if Ryzen is competitive, Intel's prices will go down.

 

Utilising the NVMe port makes 4 CPU lanes unaccessable, as unlike Z270, it's based on z97 - meaning that 8 older 2.0 lanes are available.  x2 2.0 was meant to be used by NVMe   

[Neil Bennett]

12 hours ago, Droidbot said:

But if Ryzen is competitive, Intel's prices will go down.

 

Utilising the NVMe port makes 4 CPU lanes unaccessable, as unlike Z270, it's based on z97 - meaning that 8 older 2.0 lanes are available.  x2 2.0 was meant to be used by NVMe   

12 hours later, the Ryzen prices are out... you were so right! I would hope now given the massive difference that the Intel pricing should noticeably drop; we'll have to wait and see how long before we see that impact in Australia!