PCIe lanes available in the Asus Maximus VII Hero Z97
PCIe lanes available in the Asus Maximus VII Hero Z97
I'm using an i5 4690k in the Asus Maximus VII Hero with an RTX 2060. I'm thinking about upgrading to a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD and wanted to figure out the best approach. Someone mentioned that the M.2 port on my motherboard only supports around 700MB/s because it's just two lanes, so I considered getting an adapter from M.2 to PCIe. I'm still confused about how data lanes work and what my motherboard's specs are. What's the ideal way to link all my PCI devices and set them up in BIOS? - RTX 2060 - Firewire card (I rarely use it, so I can take it out if needed) - possible M.2 card
Here are the details from the Asus site:
Storage: 1 x M.2 Socket 3, black, with M Key, supports PCIe 2260/2280 devices in PCIe mode
Expansion Slots: 2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (dual x8 or x16), 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4), 1 x PCIe 2.0 x1
The PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (PCIEX4_3) shares bandwidth with the x1 and M.2 slots. By default it's set to Auto Mode, which adjusts system speed automatically. If you add a PCIe 2.0 x4 card, the system will turn off the x1 and M.2 ports.
*2: The PCIe 2.0 x1 slots (PCIEX1_1/2/3) will be turned off when the x16 slot runs at x4 or in M.2 mode.*
The card should be placed in the first PCI-E slot. The other slots are irrelevant. The board will handle device configuration automatically, as it does on the first setup. Because the lanes aren't fully filled, there shouldn't be any significant issues.
Yes, it will likely affect GPU performance, but not necessarily significantly depending on the context.