Hey everyone! I'm considering a motherboard, specifically the B650 or B850 Steel Legend, which features PCIe 5.0 support for both an M.2 slot and a GPU. However, I'm concerned that if I use both a high-end SSD like the 990 Evo Plus and a GPU like the RTX 5070, one of them will have to revert to PCIe 4.0 since lower-tier CPUs like the 7800X3D only have 20 lanes to allocate. I've heard that the X670 and X870 motherboards manage to utilize the lanes better by sharing, but I'm not so sure about the B650 or B850 boards. Why would they even make these motherboards capable of PCIe 5.0 if one component has to downgrade? Am I better off choosing a board that provides solid VRMs and allows a PCIe 5.0 SSD while running the GPU at PCIe 4.0? I'd love to hear your thoughts!
5 Answers
The B850 actually allows both the first M.2 and the GPU to run at Gen5. It’s important to check the motherboard documentation, though. Some boards do share lanes, but many can run both components at the desired speeds without dropping to Gen4.
I have the ASUS Pro Art X870E, and it gives full 16 lanes for the GPU on Gen5, plus 4 lanes for one M.2. You can even set up two Gen5 M.2s if you really want, but honestly, how many people actually need that?
My Asus B650 E does support both PCIe 5.0 for the GPU and M.2, so it is possible. You just need to do a little digging on the specs to figure out the lane sharing details.
Honestly, I wouldn’t stress too much about PCIe 5.0 for SSDs. Unless you're doing high-end benchmarks or massive file transfers regularly, you probably won’t notice any real-world difference. PCIe 4.0 SSDs can save you quite a bit of cash and still perform well for everyday tasks.
You could consider getting an X870 Tomahawk for around $200. It allows you to run PCIe 5.0 for both the GPU and the SSD, which might be a more future-proof option.
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