PCIe lane allocation and organization
PCIe lane allocation and organization
Well, not really, plx chips are super expensive nowadays, something like $300+ at bulk pricing for the x32 gen 3 version. Compared to ~$40 at retail for a PCIe Gen 4x4 switch with about the same amount of spaghetti routing, the pricing will likely come out still ahead to just use switches. There's a reason they just kinda disappeared from motherboard design around Z370, they became double the price of the boards that they'd go on, up from about $100 for a 32 lane switch.
i've been searching for expansion boards for my server for some time, the genuine "PLX" models are quite costly—yes. yet there are other options available. i'm referring to "PLX" in the general sense, but the price of a PCIe switch chipset shows how much board space and wiring are needed to achieve what players want. (considering n cpu lanes plus m chipset lanes spread across slots, you can customize it) these components are too expensive for regular boards, though they sit in the same price range as some high-end choices. the reason TR and epyc offer so much flexibility is that they provide many connectors. in TR there are even more I/O options than epyc, since TR actually has a chipset, while epyc often relies on full x16 slots for random devices. if you're running out of lanes on epyc, it becomes a real issue.
The v4 lineup remains very powerful. I'm writing this on an e5-2690 v4 with 14 cores and 28 threads, which can handle a huge amount of RAM, plus those impressive 40 PCIe lanes. I installed a decent GPU (GTX 1060 6GB) and it runs Cyberpunk at all high settings without any issues—just smooth performance. For the price, I paid $40 for the card.