I'm trying to set up my X870E Crosshair Hero motherboard with three M.2 drives: one 1TB and two 2TB drives, all utilizing PCIe 4.0. I need some advice on how to arrange these drives so that my GPU retains its x16 bandwidth. I've checked the shared bandwidth section in the manual and want to make sure I'm making the best choices for slot placement.
2 Answers
Go for slots 1, 4, and 5 for your M.2 drives. Just a heads up, having your GPU run at x8 bandwidth won't significantly affect performance—like, you'll barely notice a 1% drop on something like a 5090.
Start by placing your main M.2 drive in M2_1, then I'd suggest using M2_4 for your second drive and M2_5 for the last one. Just be careful: if you put any of the drives in M2_2 or M2_3, it could split the bandwidth of your first PCIe x16 slot down to x8, which isn't ideal.
Can you clarify why routing through the chipset is a bad idea?