Soundcard in 16x slot?

eddiew · 13 Aug 2017 at 21:35

Hey peeps,

I'm eyeing up a Gigabyte mATX board for my next build. I only have/want a single GPU, but I also have a Soundblaster Z, which is a 1x PCI-E device. These will be the only things in the PCI-E slots, so one will be unused.

1) can I plug the Soundblaster into the lower 16x slot? (this will give better airflow to the GPU)
2) will doing so cause the top GPU slot to drop to 8x?
3) does adding an M.2 SSD at a later date change anything, given that this will occupy another PCI-E lane?

(Also sly 4th question, is there any reason to believe the mATX version of this board is worse than its full ATX counterpart if you don't need the extra slots? I would like to shrink my rig, but not at the cost of knackering performance or overclocking potential.)

Thanks in advance!

eddiew · 14 Aug 2017 at 11:45

Thanks @EsaT , I hadn't noticed the x4 further down the page. That's probably good news

eddiew · 14 Aug 2017 at 21:07

Exactly my thoughts @EsaT , thanks for the jargon translation (I'm a little out of date with regards to hardware these days). Good to know that it won't interfere with the GPU by means physical or electrical

...now that I think about it, I thought B350 wasn't for x-fire anyway, so yeah, makes sense that it is NOT another x16/x8 slot. Now I feel like I want to learn what uses a full length slot but is x4 electrically...

eddiew · 15 Aug 2017 at 09:53

Ahh, good to know, cheers

eddiew · 15 Aug 2017 at 10:05

Smffy said:
You can also set the speed manually in the BIOS on most boards so set to x4 if required. Depends which CPU and chipset you're talking about anyway but doing that or using a x4 slot will keep the GPU at x16.

Did not know that, thank you

And yeah, it does look like 8x-16x is a very small increase that I would probably not spot unless I went looking for it ^^;