Hi everyone. Id like to know if its possible or even a good idea to use an apu with 12 pcie lanes (ryzen 5650g) and eventually a gpu with 8 pcie lanes (rtx 3050) together with a nvme m.2 ssd with 4 pcie lanes on the asus tuf gaming b550 plus wifi mobo? I chose these components because of price in my country. Thanks in advance.
Hi! The Ryzen 5650G has 12 PCIe lanes. If you add an RTX3050, it will only take 8 lanes. The rest of 4 are going to an NVMe SSD running in x4 (PCIe 3 with your CPU).
The mainboard’s chipset gives you additional lanes too: 4 are used for the PCIe 3.0 x16(x4 mode) slot, 3 are for the PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. However, if you use any of the x1 slots, the PCIe 3.0 x16 will default to x1 too instead of x4.
To conclude, you’re not going to have any issues with your build.
PCIe versions are forward/backward compatible with each other, so you can get any graphics cards.
However, PCIe has limited bandwidth for more recent GPUs, so you should probably stick to something like an Nvidia 1060 or similar cards.
Your article is excellent. I would like to see you extend your article to cover external interfaces connected to the PC by a cable, either hard wire or fiber optic.
I would like to know if plugging in a small pcie card eg an ethernet card, into the smallest slot, would have an effect on the speed and bandwidth of the graphics card plugged into one of the x16 fast slots. Is it like usb, where the whole system runs at the speed of the slowest component plugged into it?
11 Responses to “What is PCI Express? Do PCIe lanes, slots, and versions matter?”
An x8 is only 2 inches long?
Hi everyone. Id like to know if its possible or even a good idea to use an apu with 12 pcie lanes (ryzen 5650g) and eventually a gpu with 8 pcie lanes (rtx 3050) together with a nvme m.2 ssd with 4 pcie lanes on the asus tuf gaming b550 plus wifi mobo? I chose these components because of price in my country. Thanks in advance.
Hi! The Ryzen 5650G has 12 PCIe lanes. If you add an RTX3050, it will only take 8 lanes. The rest of 4 are going to an NVMe SSD running in x4 (PCIe 3 with your CPU).
The mainboard’s chipset gives you additional lanes too: 4 are used for the PCIe 3.0 x16(x4 mode) slot, 3 are for the PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. However, if you use any of the x1 slots, the PCIe 3.0 x16 will default to x1 too instead of x4.
To conclude, you’re not going to have any issues with your build.
Hallo,
Thanks for the useful information!
What are the differences between the different PCI versions?
What is the best graphics card if limited to pci 1.0
PCIe versions are forward/backward compatible with each other, so you can get any graphics cards.
However, PCIe has limited bandwidth for more recent GPUs, so you should probably stick to something like an Nvidia 1060 or similar cards.
Your article is excellent. I would like to see you extend your article to cover external interfaces connected to the PC by a cable, either hard wire or fiber optic.
my pci express version doesn’t have a number next to it via CPU-Z, does that mean it’s a 1.0
Helpful info trying to figure out if a new graphics card will work in old mobo, so thanks a lot.
I would like to know if plugging in a small pcie card eg an ethernet card, into the smallest slot, would have an effect on the speed and bandwidth of the graphics card plugged into one of the x16 fast slots. Is it like usb, where the whole system runs at the speed of the slowest component plugged into it?
They should not negatively impact each other.