Hey everyone! I've got an Intel i7-11700K paired with an Asus Z590 Hero XIII motherboard. Unfortunately, my old RTX 3080 Ti got fried due to overvoltage, so I'm now using a new RTX 5070 Ti. I've noticed it's operating at PCIe 4.0 x8 instead of the expected x16. I suspect this might be because I'm using two M.2 drives in the top slots of my motherboard. Would moving one of the M.2 drives to the lower slot help? Or is the performance difference for the GPU minimal? Any advice would be appreciated!
1 Answer
Yeah, if you populate the M.2_2 slot, it can reduce the top PCIe slot to x8. So, if you're thinking of moving your M.2_2 to the M.2_3 slot, that should return the top GPU slot to x16. Just check your motherboard specs to confirm!
Would moving M.2_2 to M.2_3 help maximize the GPU's performance, or is it pointless since it's only PCIe 3.0? If there's no real boost, I'll just keep it at x8.