Z87 - PCIe Lanes Confusion...

[Syphon Filter]

Hi All,

Hoping someone can help me out with something.

I have an Asus Maximus VI Formula - this is a Z87 based board that I am running with a 4770k.

The board has a total of three 16x Slots. These can run as follows:

1. x16
2. x8 + x8 - I currently run SLI 780Ti so operating in this mode.
3. x8 + x4 + x4

Am I right in saying the 16 lanes on the x16 slots come from the CPU?

The board also has three x1 Slots. One of which is currently occupied by a SoundBlaster ZR.
The mPCIe slot supports M.2 drives but I think the format is weird and it's only a x1 slot I think.

Where do these get their lanes from, PCH?

Onto the crux of the matter:

Can I continue to run SLI, my sound card AND also add a PCIe card to allow me to run an M.2 SSD with x4 lanes?

Any help would be much appreciated.

TIA,

Syphon

 

[bonehead123]

Yes you are correct on the 16x lanes coming from the CPU. The other lanes come from the Z87 chipset.

You might be able to run an m2 drive off of a pci card, but seeings how your pci slots are only v2.0, this would almost be pointless, since m2 drives need as much bandwidth and power as possible to give you the performance they are noted for.

Something else to consider:

M2 support on most Z87 boards is/was flaky at best, and only marginally better on Z97 boards, been there done that, never again
Fortunately this has been fixed with the Z170/skylake boards

As for the combination of all three together, you would lose some GPU performance going from 8x/8x to 8x/4x/4x, but unless you are playing really demanding games or doing other real GPU-intensive work, you may or may not notice it that much...

IMHO, given the marginal overall difference this setup would make, I would not bother with it.