7950X3D has only 28 lanes compared to the 48 lanes I have now, will it be a problem?

[hobib_ali]

At the moment I have an i9 10940X LGA2066 on a X299 motherboard, I got this as it has 48 PCIe lanes

Ive been looking at a 7950X3D but today I discovered it only has 28 PCIe lanes

At the moment I have a RTX 4090 installed, this uses 16 lanes

I also have a creative ZXR sound card installed on a PCie slot, needed because of the 600ohm amp for my headphones, and a Wifi 6 wireless AX PCIe adaptor so it connects to my AX router, this takes up 8 and 8 lanes

I then have 4 10tb 7200rpm drives for storage and 3 M.2s/SSD's for games and apps

Not to mention 8 fully used USBs from the motherboard (peripherals)

So if I purchase the 7950X3D will I face issues with my set up, like will I have to sacrifice some of the PCIe components ect to get it working fully? because of the lack of lanes on the 79503DX


Eventually I have plans to remove the 4x10TB drives in a synology or Qnap and hook it up to my router for network storage
Get rid of my ZXR sound card and replace with a desktop headphone amp
Get rid of the PCIe AX wifi adaptor and use a ethernet cable

But until then I'm thinking a direct CPU to the AM5 chipset 79503DX and DDR5 ram along with a new motherboard may not work with my current set up?

 

[Tetras]

a creative ZXR sound card installed on a PCie slot, needed because of the 600ohm amp for my headphones, and a Wifi 6 wireless AX PCIe adaptor so it connects to my AX router, this takes up 8 and 8 lanes

Do you mean, these take up an 8 lane slot in your current motherboard?

Since, I'm pretty sure these would be 1 lane each, not 8.

 

[Nelly]

I have the Creative ZxR on my old Z77 motherboard running from PCIe x1 slot, although you could put it in any slot in theory.

However, I ready this article regarding the Asus ROG STRIX X670E-E GAMING WIFI >> https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...-e-gaming-wifi-latest-bios-0925.305964/page-6

Hi Everyone.
I finally managed to fix the crashing and restarts. The problem what i was experiencing started at random times over the last couple of months. It slowly got worse over the last couple of weeks crashing on the desktop every single bootup into windows. Eliminating the fault wasn't easy as the Event viewer only recognised the crash state not the device, which made it harder. Anyway I found it was my Creative ZXR soundcard causing the issue which was plugged into the PCIEX 16_3 slot . I didn't have much choice to put it there because my graphics card is massive covering the other slots. I have upgraded the soundcard now to the Creative AX-7 and had no more issues. I can consentrate on the bios setting more now giving them fine tweaks and once i find an increase in performance i will show everyone my findings as a baseline for you to work off if you want to. cheers

 

[Jamin280672]

At the moment I have an i9 10940X LGA2066 on a X299 motherboard, I got this as it has 48 PCIe lanes

Ive been looking at a 7950X3D but today I discovered it only has 28 PCIe lanes

At the moment I have a RTX 4090 installed, this uses 16 lanes

I also have a creative ZXR sound card installed on a PCie slot, needed because of the 600ohm amp for my headphones, and a Wifi 6 wireless AX PCIe adaptor so it connects to my AX router, this takes up 8 and 8 lanes

I then have 4 10tb 7200rpm drives for storage and 3 M.2s/SSD's for games and apps

Not to mention 8 fully used USBs from the motherboard (peripherals)

So if I purchase the 7950X3D will I face issues with my set up, like will I have to sacrifice some of the PCIe components ect to get it working fully? because of the lack of lanes on the 79503DX


Eventually I have plans to remove the 4x10TB drives in a synology or Qnap and hook it up to my router for network storage
Get rid of my ZXR sound card and replace with a desktop headphone amp
Get rid of the PCIe AX wifi adaptor and use a ethernet cable

But until then I'm thinking a direct CPU to the AM5 chipset 79503DX and DDR5 ram along with a new motherboard may not work with my current set up?

Yes it has 28 PCI-e lanes from the CPU but only 24 are user available, the other 4 are for the downstream from the CPU to the chipset and cant be used for anything else, bear in mind these are PCI-e 5.0 lanes.

So if you get the right board you will have a PCI-e 5.0 x16 slot for the GPU and 2 x PCI-e 5.0 x4 slots for 2 of the M.2 slots, if it has 2 PCI-e x16 slots and you plug anything into the 2nd slot, both slots will get dropped to x8x8, but thats the same with any board, thats your 24 lanes gone.

Surely your WiFi card and Soundcard are x1 devices not x8 devices ?, most boards have WiFi 6e on them now a days, so you could probably loose the WiFi card and plug the soundcard in to the very bottom slot without loosing anything.

Everything else runs off the chipset, which provides a shed load more PCI-e lanes (cant remember how many but its about 20) except they are PCI-e 4.0 lanes, for the x1 slots, 3rd and 4th (if available) nvme slots, SATA etc.

USB etc have their own controllers

This would probably have everything you need, you would just have to put the soundcard in the bottom slot and use the onboard WiFi https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...ocket-am5-ddr5-atx-motherboard-mb-6jw-as.html

 

[hobib_ali]

Do you mean, these take up an 8 lane slot in your current motherboard?

Since, I'm pretty sure these would be 1 lane each, not 8.

Im going off the motherboard manual, as both of the components are in a x8 slot so I assume it will use the 8 lanes, no?

 

[hobib_ali]

Yes it has 28 PCI-e lanes from the CPU but only 24 are user available, the other 4 are for the downstream from the CPU to the chipset and cant be used for anything else, bear in mind these are PCI-e 5.0 lanes.

So if you get the right board you will have a PCI-e 5.0 x16 slot for the GPU and 2 x PCI-e 5.0 x4 slots for 2 of the M.2 slots, if it has 2 PCI-e x16 slots and you plug anything into the 2nd slot, both slots will get dropped to x8x8, but thats the same with any board, thats your 24 lanes gone.

Surely your WiFi card and Soundcard are x1 devices not x8 devices ?, most boards have WiFi 6e on them now a days, so you could probably loose the WiFi card and plug the soundcard in to the very bottom slot without loosing anything.

Everything else runs off the chipset, which provides a shed load more PCI-e lanes (cant remember how many but its about 20) except they are PCI-e 4.0 lanes, for the x1 slots, 3rd and 4th (if available) nvme slots, SATA etc.

USB etc have their own controllers

This would probably have everything you need, you would just have to put the soundcard in the bottom slot and use the onboard WiFi https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...ocket-am5-ddr5-atx-motherboard-mb-6jw-as.html

boss, why is there 2 motherboards for the AM5/ 7950X3D CPU

you have X670 and a B650 choice to choose from, thats actually confusing as now people have to decide which motherboard version to choose from with their 7950X3D

• AM5 (X670) Ryzen 7000 Series (23) ?
• AM5 (A620/B650) Ryzen 7000 Series ?

Also example the below motherboard, its PCIe slot layout is actually quite thoughtful, as soon as you install a 4090 on some of these boards it eats up all the PCIe slots unless you have a 2 slot blower style card which doesnt exist for the 4090 cards

this motherboard has it designed nicely, as soon as you install a 4090 you still have 2 PCIe slots available, but a lot of the boards have a layout which means a 4090 will cover the remaining PCIe slot

Gigabyte X670E Aorus Master (Socket AM5) DDR5 EATX Motherboard

Order Gigabyte X670E Aorus Master (Socket AM5) DDR5 EATX Motherboard now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

 

[Quartz]

Two of your NVME drives will share chipset bandwidth (and share it with the SATA drives). You can do away with your wifi card by buying a motherboard with that onboard. Can you move the Creative ZXR to a USB device sooner rather than later?

If you intensively use your NVME drives, perhaps you might look at the Threadripper platform? That has 48 PCIe lanes.

 

[Jamin280672]

Im going off the motherboard manual, as both of the components are in a x8 slot so I assume it will use the 8 lanes, no?

No, its not what the slot can provide, its what the card needs and uses, if this is the card then the contacts of it only take up part of the slot and this is x1 if your WiFi card looks the same then thats x1 too. https://uk.creative.com/p/sound-blaster/sound-blaster-zxr#buy-menu

The other problem is you are trying to compare X299 to X670 / B650, wasnt X299 HEDT ? the Ryzen version of that will as @Quartz said be Threadripper, X670 and B650 are just mainstream the same as Intels Z790 / B760 etc.

That Gigabyte board for instance doesnt bring anything more than this one for instance, this would do you fine for what you want to put in it, and plenty of room between the GPU slot and other slots, you dont have to spend stupid money on a board unless you are going to spend all your spare time tweaking and overclocking RAM and CPU, this is pretty much the same as the other board I posted, but has 1 less M.2 slot and less PCI-e 5.0, https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...ocket-am5-ddr5-atx-motherboard-mb-6jx-as.html

 

[Tetras]

Im going off the motherboard manual, as both of the components are in a x8 slot so I assume it will use the 8 lanes, no?

The motherboard manual doesn't know how many lanes your PCI-E cards need, only how many lanes the slot is wired for. Those 8 lanes are probably reserved (they usually are, unless there's a switch on the board, or on the CPU), but if you plugged those cards into a 1 lane slot, they'd only use 1 lane on your motherboard.

 

[jigger]

Two of your NVME drives will share chipset bandwidth (and share it with the SATA drives). You can do away with your wifi card by buying a motherboard with that onboard. Can you move the Creative ZXR to a USB device sooner rather than later?

If you intensively use your NVME drives, perhaps you might look at the Threadripper platform? That has 48 PCIe lanes.

On the new stuff you get PCI-E out the yahzoo! 92 and 128 IIRC.

Was recently looking at a TR Pro build with a 28 drive NVME backplane and 2tb of RAM. I would have snapped it up, but only a measly 36 gen 5 lanes isn’t enough for my RTX Super GTX TiTi Xp TNT lll

 

[FredFlint]

I'm using a B650E-E, connected GPU, 2*M.2 drives, 3*Sata drives, sound card in PCI-e slot and USB 1Gb NIC. Not had any real problems and have 2*M.2 slots and 1*SATA free. Also, most boards have Wi-Fi and NIC's built in but don’t know how good they are, the Intel NIC is bad though.

 

[Caracus2k]

One of the biggest regressions, from a consumer perspective, in the CPU/ motherboard space in the last 10 years is the withering and now pretty much total absence of a semi affordable 'prosumer/ HEDT' CPU/ Motherboard solution for people who want more connectivity than your average desktop CPU/MB combo but who also don't want to or can't spend silly money to purchase what's on offer these days.

 

[Autode1ta]

If you have these concerns maybe threadripper would be the best solution, with the gigabyte trx50 motherboard.

 

[tommoT.Striker]

Yes a Threadripper would alievate those lanes concerns but overkill though? You wouldn't buy say a 7960X for PCIE soundcard and WIFI support. Could save money using a USB soundcard instead and built in WIFI.

I'd agree with the price difference from mainstream desktop -> to HEDT/Workstation is very steep now.

Also looks like OP was already looking alternatives to his headphone setup anyway.

 

[FredFlint]

Intel Sapphire rapids has lots of lanes and you could get a £500 CPU (6 or 8 P-Cores). The boards and RAM are still not cheap though, think £600+ for a board and probably 50% extra for the RAM over normal DDR5 but you would get quad channel.

 

[jigger]

The performance difference is also very steep. Just messing around with a 64c AMD system and watching it destroy rackmount clusters from a little box sat under my desk sipping power.

 

[Sin_Chase]

There is no way you are exhausting the PCI-E lanes offered by a 7950x3d in a B650 or X670 board with your hardware. The 28 lanes you refer to are PCI-E 5.0 lanes from the CPU.

The chipset itself will also offer PCI-E lanes and are the ones likely to serve your soundcard and nvme in the non GPU PCI-E slots.

A GPU, nVME, soundcard and wifi card are not going to give you any issues. You may have some bandwidth sharing if you populate ALL m2 slors hut you need to check on a motherboard basis.

The E variant motherboards can offer more lanes (B650E and X670E).

 

[pandem0nium]

One of the biggest regressions, from a consumer perspective, in the CPU/ motherboard space in the last 10 years is the withering and now pretty much total absence of a semi affordable 'prosumer/ HEDT' CPU/ Motherboard solution for people who want more connectivity than your average desktop CPU/MB combo but who also don't want to or can't spend silly money to purchase what's on offer these days.

I do miss this as well.

AM3 for all its faults had plenty of lanes available. 2 x 16 lane slots on FX990.

X79 3820, 4820k were very affordable.

X99 as well but started with the cut down number of lanes on the lower end CPUs.