PCIe Gen speed 3070
PCIe Gen speed 3070
Ordered a 3070 yesterday and wanted to confirm if using both M.2 slots on my motherboard would still provide solid performance. I’m curious about the PCIe speeds and whether this setup affects anything. Here’s what I have: Asus ROG Strix B550-F gaming Ryzen 5 5600X, 500GB Samsung 970 EVO, one 1TB Sabrent SB-ROCKET SSD in M.2 PCIe 3.0, plus another 1TB M.2 SSD in 2280 format.
You'll lose two SATA ports in the M.2 slots, but the top PCIe x16 port remains unaffected
Your current configuration will render tracks like this: x16 from the CPU to the GPU, x4 from the CPU to the top NVMe storage (Ryzen provides dedicated tracks for this), x4 from the chipset to the second NVMe drive. Even if your GPU only receives x8 lanes from the CPU, they would be PCIe 4.0 tracks, matching the bandwidth of x16 3.0 lanes—more than enough for gaming needs.
I've also tried using both M.2 slots, and it's okay to skip the SATA connections.