ONE and ONLY ONE PCIEX16 slot that works at X16???

[Rob Ainscough]

FYI for anyone else doing this type of build ... moving my GPU to PCIEX16_2 slot (because it no longer fits in PCIEX16_1 due to a poorly place motherboard display unit) means my water cooled front/rear 4090 GPU will only be able to run X8 and not X16.**

I "assumed" that a $1000 motherboard would:

Allow for full coverage water cooled GPUs to fit in PCIEX16_1 slot
Allow me to select which one of the two PCIEX16 slots to run at X16

Unfortunately that is NOT the case, the ONLY slot this Asus X670E Extreme motherboard can operate at X16 is PCIEX16_1 slot (regardless of M.2 configurations).* That does beg the question why Asus falsely label the slot as PCIEX16_2 when it has no ability to run at X16 regardless of hardware configuration?

This is clearly a motherboard limitation as the CPU PCIE lanes are sufficient to support.

nVidia 4090 GPU (16X) PCIEX16_1
M.2 4X via Chipset (4X)
M.2 4X via General Purpose PCIe (4X)
USB 3.0 PCIe card (4X) PCIEX4

All within lane spec usage ... however because I moved the GPU to PCIEX16_2 this is what I'm forced with:

nVidia 4090 GPU (8X) PCIEX16_2
M.2 4X via Chipset (4X)
M.2 4X via General Purpose PCIe (4X)
USB 3.0 PCIe card (4X) PCIEX16_1

Really not happy with ASUS right now ... maybe other manufacturers do the same?* ASUS does NOT permit me to set PCIEX16_2 to 16X and PCIEX16_1 to 4X - why??

I don't know exactly how much this has impacted performance?* I was able to improve TimeSpy score both CPU/GPU to 32379 and very good temps with peaks at 58C CPU and 47C GPU under full stressed loads (but sorta expect that from a dual loop with one loop on a custom vapor chiller).

Come on ASUS, you can do better than this.

Rob

[Murph_9000]

I suggest a riser cable (e.g. LINKUP do pretty good PCIe 4.0 ones) and front mounted GPU. That's probably better for thermals anyway, as the GPU has more space to exhaust and isn't exhausting directly on the motherboard and chipset, and it leaves a good airflow channel across the chipset heatsink that tends to be obstructed by giant GPUs. Full flexibility of lane allocation isn't simple for high bandwidth signals. It's not impossible, but not easy, and the long standing convention is that the top slot is the full x16 slot. The slots are labelled according to their mechanical/physical size, and the documentation is there for you to make an informed choice before purchasing. The lane configuration and slot labelling on the X670E boards is not really anything new, just the latest iteration of how it has been done for a long time.

Have you ever seen any mainstream motherboard that allows the second slot to run as x16? Honestly, I don't think they exist (not counting the former HEDT class boards, or the expensive pro workstation class boards (Threadripper & big Xeon).

[Rob Ainscough]

[Nate152]

Hi Rob Ainscough,

I ran into the same issue with my ROG Strix Z690-F Gaming Wifi.

There needs to be 15mm of clearance for the active backplate from the center of the pcie slot, the M.2_1 heatsink and Q-release button need more clearance.

You could have gone with this water block.

https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-quantum...b-nickel-plexi