04-29-2024 01:41 PM
Just purchased this board, and I read the manual, but I'm still confused. Can I populate all three NVME slots with Gen4 PCIE NVME drives, without cutting down the lanes to X8 for the GPU? I know the top slot is meant for Gen 5 drives and it is connected directly to the cpu. I have three Samsung 990 Pro drives I would like to install. One as OS, one for games, and another as a scratch disk for editing. Also is there any performance advantage to installing a Gen 4 NVME drive in the top slot, versus from the chipset slots? Thanks everyone.
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04-29-2024 05:04 PM - edited 04-30-2024 04:46 PM
Hello DaveImagery
Yes, you can populate all three M.2 slots with Gen 4 ssd's and still have your gpu run at x16.
Alderlake, Raptorlake and Raptorlake-R cpu's have 20 pcie 4.0 lanes or 16 pcie 5.0 lanes.
With your gpu in the first pcie x16 slot and a pcie 4.0 ssd in the M.2_1 slot, this will use all 20 pcie 4.0 lanes. The other two ssd's will run off the chipset.
The M.2_1 slot will always be a little faster because its 4 lanes are from the cpu.
04-29-2024 05:04 PM - edited 04-30-2024 04:46 PM
Hello DaveImagery
Yes, you can populate all three M.2 slots with Gen 4 ssd's and still have your gpu run at x16.
Alderlake, Raptorlake and Raptorlake-R cpu's have 20 pcie 4.0 lanes or 16 pcie 5.0 lanes.
With your gpu in the first pcie x16 slot and a pcie 4.0 ssd in the M.2_1 slot, this will use all 20 pcie 4.0 lanes. The other two ssd's will run off the chipset.
The M.2_1 slot will always be a little faster because its 4 lanes are from the cpu.
04-29-2024 05:29 PM
Thanks so much for clearing that up for me. Now I know how to better setup my system.