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Graphics card and 2 M.2 Drives- How to set them up on Hero Board?

Les_Garten
Level 9
I have a Maximus Hero, Graphics Card and 2 M.2 PCIEx 4.0 drives

Is there anyway to install these where they all are on the CPU PCIEx Lanes? It looks like whether I use the Hyper M.2 card or the M.2_2 or M.2_3 slots that my second M.2 will be on the PCH Chipset lanes?
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12 REPLIES 12

BigJohnny
Level 13
What board and what CPU. You may be limited in CPU lanes. GPU takes 16 and each m.2 takes x4 and x4 for PCH controller so thats 28 lanes. If your board and CPU doesnt support 28 lanes you cant run them both or you have to lower the GPU to X8. Depending on the GPU it may not matter. 2080Ti was the first to breach the X8 bandwidth and only by like 6%.
Your PC specs listed dont help any as a 5900X isnt going to run on a Z97.

Z690 Maximus Hero
i9-12900
RTX 3080

BigJohnny wrote:
What board and what CPU. You may be limited in CPU lanes. GPU takes 16 and each m.2 takes x4 and x4 for PCH controller so thats 28 lanes. If your board and CPU doesnt support 28 lanes you cant run them both or you have to lower the GPU to X8. Depending on the GPU it may not matter. 2080Ti was the first to breach the X8 bandwidth and only by like 6%.
Your PC specs listed dont help any as a 5900X isnt going to run on a Z97.


I am not sure about this because the x16 slot is PCIE 5 not that it is using that but there must be more lanes to support the extra bandwidth with all these drives, I have the Strix Z690 Gaming A which has 4x Gen 4 M2 slots according to the manual it supports all 4.

Nate152
Moderator
The new z690 motherboards have 12 pch pcie lanes, you can run your M.2 drives off the pch lanes to keep your gpu at x16.

Nate152 wrote:
The new z690 motherboards have 12 pch pcie lanes, you can run your M.2 drives off the pch lanes to keep your gpu at x16.


I was wondering if there was a way to run both M.2s on the CPU with some combo on board slots and the Hyper m.2 card.

Nate152
Moderator
Looking at the manual,

It does look like it's possible if you use the M.2_ 1 slot and the ROG Hyper M.2 card in the third pcie slot. Just be aware your gpu will drop to x8.

Nate152 wrote:
Looking at the manual,

It does look like it's possible if you use the M.2_ 1 slot and the ROG Hyper M.2 card in the third pcie slot. Just be aware your gpu will drop to x8.


I was under the impression that most GPUs ran x8 anyhow or cannot use more than x8.

Les_Garten wrote:
I was under the impression that most GPUs ran x8 anyhow or cannot use more than x8.


3080 will see a hit at X8. 2080Ti and up saturates X8

Nate152
Moderator
With only one PCIEx16 slot occupied such as your 3090, it will run at x16.

Performance has always been negligible from x8 to x16, but the goal here for me would be to keep your 3090 at x16 to get all I could from it.

It's all in how you want to do it.