Run GPU in 8x

[Riwa125]

So I recently put together a system with these specs:

Intel 4790k

MSI z97 PC Mate Motherboard

EVGA GTX 950 FTW (I know that the system needs a better card, that's in the tubes for later)

Creative X-Fi Sound Blaster sound card

 

The issue I am having is that with the GPU installed, I have no remaining PCI-e lanes for the 1x sound card. Is there a way to run the GPU in 8x mode instead of 16x? The bottom slot is only 4x, and I'm not willing to run my GPU that slow. Any ideas?

[suchamoneypit]

Your card will not be bottlenecked by adding a soundcard and on top of that your chipset should have some PCIE lanes itself so you could even add in a second GPU and still not have any issues.

[Lurick]

The GPU will automatically drop to x8 mode but the Sound Card should pull from the PCH lanes in the x4 or an x1 slot and not the lanes that go direct to the CPU so the GPU will still run in x16.

[r2724r16]

Even running the GTX 950 in 4x mode won't take away too much performance, so 8x should be fine. 

[GoldenLag]

13 minutes ago, r2724r16 said:

Even running the GTX 950 in 4x mode won't take away too much performance, so 8x should be fine. 

you can probably run it in 1x before being able to notice some performance drop, but still be able to run it just fine

[EarthWormJM2]

I did the same thing counting the PCIE lanes when I was adding a Intel PCIE NVMe SSD. Then learned, as Lurick and suchamoneypit said, that the chipset has some additional lanes for slower devices like soundcards or network cards that are separate from the direct-to-cpu lanes. You will be fine, just plug it all in and there should be no issues getting the full speed out of those devices.