870E chipset lane management ?

[Honkey]

Im looking at a GIGABYTE X870E AORUS ELITE WIFI7
And a RTX 5090.
I have 3. m2. 2280 ssd drives
1 samsung gen 4
2 hp gen 3
And i need to fit a sound blaster z in here somewhere.
Can i install all this and still keep the PCIE at 16x?
I do need to keep the PCIE at 16x right?
thanks

[_I_]

the sb will dynamically adjust lanes as needed

but look at the boards manual to see how they are divided and assigned to slots
x16 length slot may be x4 or x8 lanes

[Omega]

Depends on the motherboard. On most motherboards the buttom slots share bandwidth with the chipset, they do not take away any lanes from the top slot which connects directly with the CPU.

[Honkey]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFoY8YHOVlE

if i understand this. if i use the m.2 slots it goes down to 8 from 16?
thanks for the replys

[Omega]

Originally posted by Honkey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFoY8YHOVlE

if i understand this. if i use the m.2 slots it goes down to 8 from 16?
thanks for the replys

To simplify it, all you have to do is connect your soundcard to one of the bottom slots. If you do this nothing changes and the GPU will continue to run at x16.

[A&A]

The second PCIe x16 has only 4 lanes connected to the chipset.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X870E-AORUS-ELITE-WIFI7-rev-10-11/sp#sp

The second and third M.2 share lanes with the first PCIe X16 slot.
There is a fourth slot that also is directly connected to the chipset, so you end up with one ssd that has to share lanes with the top X16 unless you buy an adapter and put it in the third X16.

[Honkey]

Originally posted by A&A:

The second PCIe x16 has only 4 lanes connected to the chipset.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X870E-AORUS-ELITE-WIFI7-rev-10-11/sp#sp

The second and third M.2 share lanes with the first PCIe X16 slot.
There is a fourth slot that also is directly connected to the chipset, so you end up with one ssd that has to share lanes with the top X16 unless you buy an adapter and put it in the third X16.

yea and that means my first x16 slot wont be at x16.
the video card has to be at x16 right?

[A&A]

Originally posted by Honkey:

yea and that means my first x16 slot wont be at x16.
the video card has to be at x16 right?

It's not necessery, but it's good to have.
Either way, the RTX5000 comes with PCIe 5.0, so it will be similar to x16 4.0

[Honkey]

it seems weird they would make it this way. everyone whos buys top end board like that
is going to put a big video card in it. but maybe it has to be that way..
so what should i do.
not worry about the first PCIE being at x16. will loose performance if its like x16 4.0
or put the video card in a lower slot? but that dont make sence. ive never done that

[Bad 💀 Motha]

X870E can support all those ssd and a sound card and X16 GPU no problem. The sound cards are only PCIE X1

Even if an RTX 50 was to somehow operate at PCIE 5.0 @ X8 that's equivalent to PCIE 4.0 @ X16

[A&A]

Lower slots are way worse. They are connected to the chipset with 4 lanes.
Like I said, you can buy an adapter and connect the third SSD there.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by A&A:

Lower slots are way worse. They are connected to the chipset with 4 lanes.
Like I said, you can buy an adapter and connect the third SSD there.

Why? None of those SSD are Gen5 so 3 is fine. Even 4 nvme on those boards are fine

[A&A]

Because if OP wants all 16 lines on the first slot to work for the GPU only and not shared with the second and/or third M.2, it is cheap to do it although I also find it a bit pointless and without benchmarks I wouldn't give 10 euros upfront for something that might not be necessary.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Ok and do we know WHICH CPU the OP will be using. Aside from Chipset and actual Motherboard, the CPU you are going to use determines alot about whether all this will work as intended or not. Because different CPUs offer different max amounts of PCIE Lanes. And not all PCIE are handled by the CPU. 2 of those NVME ssds and the sound card would generally be handled by the Chipset lanes while the GPU and top most NVME slot using the Lanes provided by the installed CPU

A typical 9in x 12in ATX 870E MB can typically handle 4x NVME SSDs , a GPU at full X16 bandwidth and at least one PCIE X1 or X4 card.

[Honkey]

amd ryzen 7 9800x3d

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Then everything I said about up to 4x NVME SSDs + GPU @ X16 and at least 1x X1 or X4 card is all true. Your Motherboard specs will even basically confirm all of that for you without the need for this thread at all.

I would suggest a decent board from ASUS, ASROCK or MSI though; never ever GIGABYTE; that brand is complete trash.