Z490 aorus master pcie layout??

[steverebo]

I've just grabbed a z490 aorus master it only has 3 full length PCIE slots the X16, X8 and X4 plus 3 m.2 x4 slots ive populated all 3 M.2 slots with nvme ssd's can i put my sound card in the x4 slot without effecting my gpu or m.2 ssd's????

 

[AlienALX]

Depends on the board I would imagine.

I know on X570 the PCH has extra lanes for stuff like that, you would need to do some digging.

 

[Avet]

You should be fine. Page 32 in the Motherboard manual. The 3-rd slot is from the PCH. Only the first two slots are from CPU operating at 16x/0x or 8x/8x. Only 2080 TI can saturate an 8x PCI-E Gen 3 slot. Any other card is perfectly fine in the 8x slot.

All m.2 drives on Z490 are connected to PCH which has only 4x PCI-E Gen 3 lanes connection to CPU. You are shoving 12x PCI-E lanes of bandwidth through a 4x PCI-E connection. Your m.2 drives will never work to their full potential, but if you are not constantly copying massive files or editing 8K RAW footage you won't notice it.

 

[looz]

Just to add, using some m.2 slots disables some SATA ports.

 

[Avet]

Just to add, using some m.2 slots disables some SATA ports.

That is page 32 from the Motherboard manual.

 

[looz]

Ah, right My bad

 

[steverebo]

Thats really poop, funnily enough im running an rtx 2080ti strix oc on water ��

I don't want my gpu to suffer might ditch one of th M.2 drives as I'm also running 2 Sata drives.

So from reading that my cpu has 16 lanes dedicated to the gpu/pcie slots and my pch has 24 lanes shared between the m.2 slots sata drives lan usb etc.

So if I used the bottom x4 slot for a sound card is that using the pch or cpu lanes?

 

[Warchild]

Thats really poop, funnily enough im running an rtx 2080ti strix oc on water ��

I don't want my gpu to suffer might ditch one of th M.2 drives as I'm also running 2 Sata drives.

So from reading that my cpu has 16 lanes dedicated to the gpu/pcie slots and my pch has 24 lanes shared between the m.2 slots sata drives lan usb etc.

So if I used the bottom x4 slot for a sound card is that using the pch or cpu lanes?

Your GPU will still run optimal at x8

I have 2 m.2 drives, sound card and GPU as well as Sata ports loaded, 1,2,3,4 disabled. And zero impact on GPU performance or the drives. x4 slot uses PCH if i remember correct.

 

[steverebo]

Cheers guys, hmm seriously considering getting the soundblaster X3 instead of the AE7 to avoid the risk. The on-board sound of my z490 aorus master on paper sounds good but I can hear the difference in power and fullness of the audio compared to my old ae5

 

[AlienALX]

If the drive is nvme it won't use sata ports. It will use lanes. If it's m.2 sata it will use sata ports.

Please don't confuse the two they are totally different.

 

[Avet]

Cheers guys, hmm seriously considering getting the soundblaster X3 instead of the AE7 to avoid the risk. The on-board sound of my z490 aorus master on paper sounds good but I can hear the difference in power and fullness of the audio compared to my old ae5

I would always recommend getting an external sound card. With X3 you also get Super X-Fi. Which is amazing.