PCI lanes Question

I’ve always wondered what happens when you run out of PCI lanes? On my 1600X I have a GTX 1080, M.2 drive, a sound card and 3 sata ssd’s, I try and put a capture card in but it doesn’t work, I take the sound card out and replace it with the capture card and then it works. Can anyone shed light on this for me?

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Hey, welcome to the asylum.

You said it yourself - it just doesn’t work.
The GPU takes its lanes, the M.2 takes its lanes, the storage and what not takes the rest and if there is nothing left it’s like turning on a TV with no signal.

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KEK …

Alright try this find the x4 lane and put the sound card there. Place the M.2 on x4 mode … graphics in x8 should come to the total… 16

I dont believe the sata takes lanes. I think its another interface… but I could be wrong. You could try forcing the Sound Card into X1 mode it doesnt need the bandwidth… if possible on your motherboard

Otherwise your prolly SOL and should upgrade to the base thread ripper of thread ripper 2 or 3

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Thanks for the reply. I have heard sound cards can get away with running in x1 and don’t need the full four lanes so I will try that, I love my 1600x and want to upgrade to X570 but you could be right and it might be better for me to get a threadripper system.

The whole reason TR exists is content makers especially need the PCIE realestate

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The chipset have 4 lanes to work with. SATA ports use those…

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I have related follow up question

With pcie 4.0 could you like use less lanes to pcie 3.0 stuff or is it actual lane whats needed

Afaik it’s the bandwidth, not really the lane…
PCIe 4 have twice the bandwidth of PCIe 3 so for example if you use PCIe 3 x4 NVMe on the X570 you will have bandwidth leftover. I’m not so sure if there is a possibility of that bandwidth being relocated to some other place on the motherboard. That would be jolly complicated task.

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With PCIe 4, you get twice the bandwidth compared to PCIe 3.
So when your GPU was happy at PCIe3 x8, it will now be happy at PCIe4 x4 (if GPU supports PCIe4).

AFAIK, there is no PCIe x2

Alrite I was not being specific enough, what if its just pcie 3 which doesnt support 4?

Need to look into that. No idea.

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What board and what slots do you have things in?