I'm in the process of rebuilding an older PC that has PCIe Gen 3 support. I'm planning to add a SATA expansion card along with a 2.5Gb NIC to transfer files to my other 2.5G devices. I've been looking over the motherboard manual and brushing up on PCIe lanes, but I have a couple of questions that are still puzzling me.
The motherboard has one PCIe slot labeled as 'x16' and another as 'x16 (Wired as x4)'. Can I assume they perform at the same speed for my intended use?
Also, I found this SATA expansion card that I'm considering using: [Link to SATA Card](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09X18XWPH). It has a PCIE x1 interface and is compatible with 1X/4X/8X/16 slots, with a maximum transfer speed of up to SATA III 6 Gbps. Does this 'x1 interface' indicate that it will bottleneck my performance, or is it just a sign that it works with any PCIe configuration while still hitting that 6 Gbps limit?
1 Answer
For your first question, the x16 slot provides four times the bandwidth of the x4 slot. However, since your SATA card uses only one lane, it can fit into either slot without any performance loss. You can install it in the x1 slot (slot number 3 in your diagram), and it’ll work perfectly fine!
Thanks for clearing that up! Just to check, does that mean the single lane on my SATA card makes it useless for high-speed transfers with the 2.5Gb NIC? I’ve got other devices using 2.5G, and while the NIC was inexpensive, I'm curious if it's worth it.