I'm considering building a new system using the Gigabyte X870 Gaming Board and I'm a bit confused about the PCIe lane sharing situation with this board. Currently, I have a setup that includes a GPU (Nvidia RTX 3080), two M.2 drives for my OS and games, one 3.5 HDD for bulk storage, and a 4K Pro Capture Card.
In my upgraded setup, will I be able to keep using all of this hardware—including a next-gen 50 series graphics card—without any issues regarding bandwidth for the capture card? If not, would switching the second M.2 drive to a SATA SSD for games help alleviate any lane constraints?
Also, I heard something about needing to disable USB 4.0 ports in BIOS. Does that mean I lose USB-C functionality completely or just the high speeds?
1 Answer
You should be good with your storage setup! Running two M.2 drives won't conflict with each other when it comes to lanes. If you add a third M.2 NVMe drive, the second and third will drop to x2 speeds, which is something to keep in mind.
The bigger issue lies with your capture card, especially since you’re using the Elgato 4K Pro. Beyond the main PCIe slot for your GPU, the other slots are limited to x1 PCIe 3.0. Can you tell me more about how you plan to use it?
I was worried about that too, since I need that full bandwidth for the capture card. I just want to have enough space for my stream recordings and then transfer them to my NAS. But good to know that two M.2 drives should be sufficient for now!