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Technical question about Crosshair VIII Hero and PCIE4

njbongo
Level 9
Hi all,

I have a technical question about how PCIE 4 works on this board, and the x570 chips in general.

It is my understanding that the top M2 (M2-1) slot above the graphics card, and the slot the GPU goes into, share direct PCIE lanes to the CPU. While the bottom M2-2 slot has lanes going to the x570 chipset. At the moment, this is my configuration:

CPU - Ryzen 5 5600x
GPU - GTX 1070 (I just sold my 2080 ti for an obscene amount on eBay, and will be upgrading to a 6800XT OR 6900XT as soon as I can get one)
M2-1 - WD Black SN750 1TB PCIE3 NVME Drive
M2-2 - WD Black SN750 1TB PCIE3 NVME Drive

I was planning on upgrading BOTH drives to the new WD Black SN850 PCIE4 drives. However, if I do that NOW, with the GTX 1070 in there, will it force the drive in the top M2 Slot to also run at PCIE3 only? Or, are they still independent as to what speed they run at, even though they share lanes.

I did some searching and can't really find a clear answer, I'd love someone at ASUS to chime in and give me the CORRECT answer. 🙂

Thanks
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6 REPLIES 6

RedSector73
Level 12
None drop down PCIE Gen 3.0 from Gen 4.0

This is how the layout of Hero works
https://www.techpowerup.com/img/x5IOE9hplxgQwNWM.jpg

Might find this helpful as it appears you are getting B550 or A520 implementation confused with X570
https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/3611-amd-a520-chipset-comparison-specs

RedSector73 wrote:
None drop down PCIE Gen 3.0 from Gen 4.0

This is how the layout of Hero works
https://www.techpowerup.com/img/x5IOE9hplxgQwNWM.jpg

Might find this helpful as it appears you are getting B550 or A520 implementation confused with X570
https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/3611-amd-a520-chipset-comparison-specs


I have seen the chart you linked above, but this is directly from the Crosshair VIII Hero's spec page:


1 x M.2_1 socket 3, with M Key, Type 2242/2260/2280 (PCIE 4.0 x4 and SATA modes) storage devices support
1 x M.2_1 socket 3, with M key, type 2242/2260/2280 storage devices support (SATA & PCIE 3.0 x 4 mode)

AMD X570 chipset :
1 x M.2_2 socket 3, with M Key, Type 2242/2260/2280/22110(PCIE 4.0 x4 and SATA modes) storage devices support
8 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s),
Support Raid 0, 1, 10
AMD Ryzenâ„¢ 5000 Series/ 3000 Series Desktop Processors :
AMD RyzenTM 4000 G-Series / 3000 G-Series / 2000 Series / 2000 G-Series Processors :

It lists the M2.2 slot under the chipset section, aside from the label in the manual of M2_2 for the lower slot, it's also the only one supporting 22110.
So, you're saying Asus's spec page is wrong?

Not sure if this helps but page 1-8 of user manual shows that for 3rd Gen Ryzen processors with single GPU

PCIe x16_1 GPU x16 (PCIe 4.0)
M2_1 (PCIe mode) x4 (PCIe 4.0)
M2_2 (PCIe mode) x4 (PCIe 4.0)

As already posted "None drop down PCIE Gen 3.0 from Gen 4.0".

njbongo wrote:
So, you're saying Asus's spec page is wrong?


I'm not in conflict with Asus webpage you quoted. I am unsure of your question.

Ziggiesden
Level 7
I'm running AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Processor @4.315Gh with two Sabrent PCIE4 drives they benchmark at full speed.

I have the same setup running on a Formula Board too.

Yes, I too am looking to upgrade to those drives - it will be interesting to see what they do in RAID 0. My benchmarks:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 7.0.0 x64 (C) 2007-2019 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World: https://crystalmark.info/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

[Read]
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 9349.954 MB/s [ 8916.8 IOPS] < 896.38 us>
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 3219.985 MB/s [ 3070.8 IOPS] < 325.44 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 1062.596 MB/s [ 259422.9 IOPS] < 1967.29 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 59.960 MB/s [ 14638.7 IOPS] < 68.20 us>

[Write]
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 8272.714 MB/s [ 7889.5 IOPS] < 1011.76 us>
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 7281.084 MB/s [ 6943.8 IOPS] < 143.85 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 854.580 MB/s [ 208637.7 IOPS] < 2438.50 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 266.757 MB/s [ 65126.2 IOPS] < 15.24 us>

Profile: Default
Test: 1 GiB (x5) [Interval: 5 sec]
Date: 2020/07/16 19:48:11
OS: Windows 10 Enterprise [10.0 Build 19041] (x64)




QUOTE=njbongo;819502]Hi all,

I have a technical question about how PCIE 4 works on this board, and the x570 chips in general.

It is my understanding that the top M2 (M2-1) slot above the graphics card, and the slot the GPU goes into, share direct PCIE lanes to the CPU. While the bottom M2-2 slot has lanes going to the x570 chipset. At the moment, this is my configuration:

CPU - Ryzen 5 5600x
GPU - GTX 1070 (I just sold my 2080 ti for an obscene amount on eBay, and will be upgrading to a 6800XT OR 6900XT as soon as I can get one)
M2-1 - WD Black SN750 1TB PCIE3 NVME Drive
M2-2 - WD Black SN750 1TB PCIE3 NVME Drive

I was planning on upgrading BOTH drives to the new WD Black SN850 PCIE4 drives. However, if I do that NOW, with the GTX 1070 in there, will it force the drive in the top M2 Slot to also run at PCIE3 only? Or, are they still independent as to what speed they run at, even though they share lanes.

I did some searching and can't really find a clear answer, I'd love someone at ASUS to chime in and give me the CORRECT answer. 🙂

Thanks

mdzcpa
Level 12
NVME PCIE is independent. The PCIE 16_1 will run on GEN 3 with your 1070, and both NVME will run at GEN 4 if you put GEN 4 M.2 drives in there.