I'm building a gaming PC with an RTX 5070 Ti and a Ryzen 7800X3D and I'm considering two motherboards: the Gigabyte B850 Gaming X WiFi 6E and the Gigabyte B850 Aorus Elite WiFi 7. My main concern is about lane sharing conflicts between the M.2 slots and the main PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, as I've heard that using NVMe SSDs can reduce the GPU lanes from x16 to x8. Can anyone explain if this is an issue with either of these motherboards? Also, I'm curious about which has better VRM since the Aorus Elite hasn't been tested by Hardware Unboxed. Are there better options in the same price range from MSI or other brands? Any help would be appreciated!
1 Answer
You don't really have to stress about lane sharing on a mid-tier B850 board like the ones you're considering. It's usually a concern with higher-end X870 or E motherboards. Most B850 boards won't share lanes with the top PCIe slot unless they're really high-end, which these aren't. So you should be good!
So do any of the two motherboards I mentioned have lane sharing? What about better options in the same price range?