X670E Crosshair extreme lanes configuration

[j1b]

Hey peeps,

I have an aging Threadripper platform that is now giving me fits between hangs, coldboots post hangs, sleep resume problems and the time has come to get off as it's been many a years.  I'm looking around to be able to support the hardware I will keep and I'm confused and disappointed at how shafted consumers get with lane count compared to the stagnant and almost dead HEDT market.  I have a soundcard and 2nvme drives but I can't confirm to where the lanes for the x4 slot are wired to, the chipset or will it bifurcate and swap the GPU x16 slot to x8?  And no, I'm not ditching the sound card.  It works, I like it, I don't need to junk it.  In a perfect world I'd like to run a gpu, both those drives and the soundcard without forcing any wonkyness to either of the important 3.  Any ideas?  I'd be willing to even use a different ROG board considering the pricing on this guy.

[Nate152]

Hello j1b,

It would work, but using the M.2_2 slot and/or the second pcie x16 slot, drops the first pcie x16 slot to x8.

Your gpu would be running at x8 with your configuration.

I might suggest the ROG Strix Z790-F Gaming Wifi with the 13700k-13900k cpu, it can run your configuration with the gpu at x16.

ROG STRIX Z790-F GAMING WIFI | ROG STRIX Z790-F GAMING WIFI | Gaming Motherboards｜ROG - Republic of ...

[Nate152 · Accepted solution]

You are correct, the pcie x4 slot is tied to the chipset.

Those Gen-Z 2 slots are totally new to me, my Z690 motherboard doesn't have these and I missed those when looking at the manual.

Looking over the specs of the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme there are two Gen-Z 2 slots.

One supports pcie 4.0 the other supports pcie 5.0.

I apologize, in this case it would work with your configuration.

[j1b]

All good!  I should have just opened my eyes more when I looked at the manual.  Now it's just a matter of the fact barely anything is in stock in europe, especially RAM!  Ughhhh!

[j1b]

Hello and thanks for the reply

That's not what I understand, from my research using M2_1 and the special slot ASUS has on their motherboards for M2 allow 2 nvme's to pull x4/x4 and keep the first PCIE at x16.  X670E has 28 lanes in a 24+4 config, 16 would go to the first pci slot and 2 x4 go to M2_1 and the special slot PCI-E GEN5 (GEN_Z or whatever it's called?).  Anything else would either run shared to the chipsets x4 or slice the top slot in half.

Anyways, I looked at the manual more closer and the PCIE x4 slot which is what my OP was about is wired through the chipset so I can put my soundcard in there and not cut lanes to the CPU.  So my config would work sans bandwidth bifurcation.

FYI, I haven't looked at that board but Intel's side has less lanes than AMD, I don't know of any motherboard in Intel land that would allow you to hook up more than 1 nvme without sacrificing CPU lanes.  If that board really works that way that's news to me, but it doesn't matter because I'm not going Intel.