Confusion about PCIe lanes, need some guidance.
Confusion about PCIe lanes, need some guidance.
Checking your PCIe slots for the new SSD. Your setup includes a Ryzen 5 3500X, GTX 1660 and a 3x1TB HDD with a 240GB M.2 SSD. You're planning to use the SSD as a boot drive on Windows. Make sure your motherboard supports the required lanes for the Optane M.2 SSSD.
I'm relying on my phone, so I don't need to look up the motherboard and CPU datasheets myself. If your motherboard has an M.2 port, you should be fine. Occasionally the M.2 slot shares bandwidth with a SATA port, so when using a hard drive or SSD, check the mainboard's documentation. There are two methods for connecting a M.2 SSD to the CPU: directly if your CPU supports 20 or more PCIe lanes, or via the chipset where all components share four lanes. It depends on your CPU's specifications.
That is a NVMe SSD. So you should use the slot M2_1. Good to know: M2_2, SATA3_3 and SATA3_4 share lanes. Only one of them can be used.
Thank you again for your response. However, as I mentioned earlier, I already have a SATA SSD in M2_2. After doing some more research, it seems I can't use M2_1 and PCIe4 simultaneously—the manual states that if M2_1 is occupied, PCIe4 will be disabled, which is an issue since I already have a 750 Ti in this slot. Is there any solution or workaround for this?