PCI Express question for PC hardware experts

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Paul1977

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#233374 13-Apr-2018 15:20

So here's the situation:

I have an older GeForce 8600 GTS graphic card in my PC, and I have ordered off ebay an HP P420 raid card which is PCI Express 3.0 x8 (it has not arrived yet).

I had a look at my mainboard before ordering and saw it had 3 PCI Express x16 slots. Figuring I can stick a x8 card into one of the spare x16 slots I went ahead and ordered it.

However, today I was looking at my mainboard manual (Asus Z170-AR) and saw the following describing the expansion slots:

2 x PCI Express 3.0/2.0 x16 slots (single at x16 or dual at x8/x8 mode)

1x PCI Express 3.0/2.0 x16 slot* (max. at x4 mode, compatible with PCIe x1 and x4 devices)

3 x PCI Express 3.0/2.0 x1 slots

1x PCI slot

* The PCIe x16_3 slot shares bandwisth with SATA6G_56. The PCIe x16_3 is default set at x2 mode.

My graphics card is in x16_1 slot, and I have nothing in x16_2 or x16_3.

So what happens when I connect the RAID card to the x16_2 slot, will it work? Do I have to lower the operating mode of x16_1 slot to x8 in order to make x16_2 slot work?

EDIT: It looks like my old graphics card in x16_1 slot is PCI Express 1.1, will this slow down the PCI Express 3.0 RAID card going into x16_2 slot?

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ratsun81

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#1995605 13-Apr-2018 16:20

Ive seen some recent tests with current graphics cards in x8 slots and there is a very small (1-5%) drop in performance of the card.

With the age of your 8600 card i dont believe you will run into any slowdowns.

There is no reason i can see that running these 2 cards in the x8 slots will present a problem.

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Dynamic

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#1995620 13-Apr-2018 16:48

I think the RAID card is a 4x card, so it would run fine in the 4x slot and not affect your graphics card.

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Paul1977

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#1995656 13-Apr-2018 17:11

Dynamic:

I think the RAID card is a 4x card, so it would run fine in the 4x slot and not affect your graphics card.

Specs say:

x8 PCIe 3.0 host interface technology delivers high performance and data bandwidth up to 8
GB/s maximum bandwidth.

Paul1977

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#1995659 13-Apr-2018 17:17

ratsun81:

Ive seen some recent tests with current graphics cards in x8 slots and there is a very small (1-5%) drop in performance of the card.

With the age of your 8600 card i dont believe you will run into any slowdowns.

There is no reason i can see that running these 2 cards in the x8 slots will present a problem.

I hadn't even realised how old it was until I looked it up today, so decided to upgrade it to a low end fanless GT 1030. I'm not a gamer and this is still about 10x faster than the old one, and getting rid of the noisy old fan on the old one can't hurt.

Even at x8 it will easily out perform my old one.

PANiCnz

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#1995670 13-Apr-2018 17:44

Are you connecting SSD’s or HDD’s to the RAID controller? If it’s spinning rust I’d put it in the 4x slot I doubt you’d notice the difference.

Paul1977

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#1995750 13-Apr-2018 21:47

PANiCnz: Are you connecting SSD’s or HDD’s to the RAID controller? If it’s spinning rust I’d put it in the 4x slot I doubt you’d notice the difference.

Initially spindles for data storage, but will likely do an SSD mirror down the road.