Check your PCIe lane usage to ensure it's optimal.
Check your PCIe lane usage to ensure it's optimal.
Hello! NVMe drives indeed use PCIe lanes, and with your i5-11400f supporting up to 20 lanes, your setup should be fine. Since you have two NVMe disks totaling 8 lanes, you're well within the supported range. Performance shouldn't be affected by this configuration, especially if you're gaming at 1080p.
The M.2 ports furthest from your CPU will link to your chipset, which has its own PCIe lanes. The chipset links to the CPU using 4 PCIe lanes, though these aren't the ones listed as supported by the CPU (since you'll always connect to a chipset). The main concern is that with three M.2 slots on your motherboard and three NVMe drives connected, performance might drop compared to using just two chipset drives simultaneously. Also, some boards may disable other PCIe or SATA ports when certain M.2 slots are active—check your manual to confirm, but if devices seem missing, it shouldn’t be an issue.