Internal capture card using Thunderbolt is available from some PCIe lanes.
Internal capture card using Thunderbolt is available from some PCIe lanes.
Hey there, I’ve been using my setup for some time now and finally chose to upgrade with a Gen 4 SSD alongside my existing Gen 3 drive. The second M.2 slot is now disabled for my capture card’s PCIe lane. Here are my choices: a) Keep the capture card in a CPU PCIe slot, which would slow down your graphics card to x8 speed (free), b) Purchase a USB-based capture card and sell the internal one ($150 or more), c) Acquire an external GPU enclosure for the capture card ($200+), d) Install the X570 board for extra PCIe lanes ($200+), or e) Use an external M.2 enclosure for a second SSD ($20+) with a dock that has USB ports (around $100). For sharing, you could put the second drive on a server and connect it to the LAN via 2.5GbE (free). This extra drive would mainly hold random files and games I want to install, not the Gen 4 SSD or SATA drives I already own. The external enclosure/dock seems the most economical besides the free option. In any case, anyone have experience with PCIe cards in external GPU enclosures or similar setups?
System Specs: 5900x 32GB RAM, Gigabyte B550 Vision D-P RTX 3080, Elgato 4K60 PRO 2x M.2 drives, 1x SATA SSD. This board supports TB3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2. There’s a video showing how to fit the internal card into an enclosure—though not officially supported, it should work.
The GPU should be placed in the closest available PCI-E lane, which is the top x16 slot. Using only four lanes in the x4 slot will likely hurt performance, especially with a 3080 that needs more bandwidth. The manual confirms the x4 slot is disabled when using the second M.2 slot, so you should use the remaining slots. Put the GPU in the highest lane slot, the capture card in the x8 slot, and follow the suggested configuration. This setup avoids unnecessary chipset hops and can improve latency and speed.
It looks like there might have been a mix-up in the setup details. Your graphics card is correctly placed in the top slot (x16), and using the x8 slot for the capture card won’t change the GPU slot to x8. The configuration you described matches what I currently have. Everything seems to be functioning properly now. You’re thinking about an eGPU enclosure, which is a good idea since it’s available locally for around $100—though it shouldn’t impact your GPU performance at this stage.
It seems the second M.2 port turns off the x4 PCIe slot I had for my graphics card. Not sure what that means.