EXPLAINED👉 WHY PCIe lanes are important to CREATORS and Why you NEED MORE! [CPU & Chipset, Gen 5 & 4 

I like how this is a sophisticated tech channel but has pen and paper visual metaphors to explain PC hardware.

The pros and cons of wanting wanting to have a professional creator PC. You can get by using a cpu that only has 20 or 24. But once you populate all of the m.2 drives and all of the pcie cards everything is running at half the intended speed. If you want to have a professional creator setup spend the money on the threadripper or equivalent from Intel. Lastly, having the latest and greatest generation doesn’t mean the software or equipment will run smoothly. Or even run at all. Stability is king. Good luck 🍀

That’s one of the primary reasons I use old used xeons for my NAS systems rather than cheaper and more power efficient low-end consumer-grade hardware. I wanted those lanes for network cards, host bus adapters for SAS or SATA drives, or even NVME drives.

Finally, someone else who understands the importance of more lanes

Bruv, I gotta pause to tell you. This is a LOT of work to go through, to explain PCIe. I watched it whilst thinking, this is the way to make a dull subject come to life. Instead of bits you have sports cars, instead of nanowires you have highways. This channel is seriously under-used, you should have millions of people at least! Best tech channel BY far and has been for a long time.

You give the best information hands down!!!! I built my first editing machine watching your videos 3 years ago and it has never failed! Thank you!! Your information is changing lives!!!!

a better "highway" analogy would have been if each generation goes faster. gen1-10mph, gen2-20mph, gen3-40mph, gen4-80mph, gen5-160mph. so you can either have more lanes or have the "cars" go faster. So 2 lanes of gen1= 2 cars going 10mph while gen2 can do the same as gen1 with one lane cause theyre going twice as fast

So glad someone is covering this! I think it's one of the most overlooked standards.

I was successful as an engineer and supervisor in the corporate world with a company that manufactured high-tech electronic components. Problems often arose in production because technology was not communicated to the production workers in a language they did not understand. You remind me of me forty years ago. We both have the ability to function as a bridge connecting important technical concepts to those who need to become more familiar with those concepts. Your skills will serve you well. I've been completely bored with computer youtube sites that do not take the time to explain the thousands of acronyms so a person can receive the value the presenter is trying to communicate. Another wonderful aspect of your videos is you do not try to entertain your audience with dry humor or quirky graphics. Making every minute of viewing your work more valuable.

Beautifully explained, wonderfully taught, and simply illustrated. Amazing job, amazing videos, keep it up brother.

The BEST Teacher / Trainer I have ever known - esp for content creators. His clarity of explaining facts makes it so easy for us.

Appreciate the clear and thorough explanation!

Thank you mate, always wondered this! Great video

very good this is one of the best explanations that I’ve heard in years. Thank you very much.

Aww man I really wish you would start covering MIDI audio interfaces and equipment! I started making music but the guys doing the tutorials are not easy to understand. I think you could do a better job lol even though it's totally new to you. Also glad to see your channel doing so well! Congratulations and God bless :)

Love this style of explanation🏡

You deserve more subs all Your videos are clearly explained. Thank u

Thanks for an easy to explanation video for us tech builders - much appreciated.

I watched "MANY" Videos and read a lot about PCIE Lanes and to be honest... This is the most simple and complete video on the internet Unfortunately, we can't have both Core performance and PCIE lanes at the same time I guess that's life :)

Very intuitive and informative as well

Very well explained, love it ❤

Nice explanation very easy to understand. Was confused about pcie for a while

Great Explanation!!! Thanks

Very well explained sir. Thank You.

Very useful video..... Learned a lot..... Thanks!!!

WOW very nice and clear explain about all staff ,thanks a lot

This is why my latest build is an Intel Xeon W7-2495X with 64 PCIe5 Lanes plus the ASUS Pro WS W790 ACE chipset lanes. The W7-2495X 24-Core at 4.8GHz all-core also benches at 150% faster than the i9-13900K in multi-thread tests.

Thanks for the video!

Love these videoes... used them to build my new 13900KS + RTX4080 Noctua build :D its awesome.

Nice explanation!. Thank you!!🤙

great explanation

Great explanation!! 👍👍 Thank you.

I'm so happy seeing your channel get bigger and the goodies you can show us. You're my 'number one' source for 'Creator PC Info'! I've been realizing I really need more PCIE lanes so I can rig an M.2 PCIE card with 4 M.2 for fast backup retrieval along with my existing SATA card. And I don't like having to go into BIOS to bifurcate.

Very clear explanation. The best video in the inet!

Very well described 👍

Thanks! Nice tutorial. :)

One thing to be noticed, the second-to-the-last PCIE slot on Asus Sage are PCIE 5.0 x8, which the remaining 8 lanes are used for 2 m.2 slots on the right side of board.

Good presentation! Ryzen 9 having 24 lanes only and dual channel config is straight criminal! Those who game are fine with their R5-R7 but R9 is meant to be a creator CPU and those specs are laughable.. Most comments: want more lanes? move to Threadripper or EPYC..

Nicely Done!👍

Very Detailed explanation. Glad i Subscribe to you and got a lot of Information from you. Thank You~~~

Also memory channels are important. Threadrippers and Xeons use 8 of them. It would be nice to understand if r-dimm memory are better for these motherboards and check speed vs unbuffered dimms. DDR4 Vs DDR5 would be a nice comparison.

A rather extended comment regarding the ASUS M.2 Hyper-type PCIe cards that support multiple M.2 NVMe SSDs: The PCIe cards that can house multiple M.2 NVME SSDs, usually 2 or 4, can be largely classified into 2 types: an M.2 to PCIe RAID card and an M.2 to PCIe adapter. The main feature that distinguishes these two types of PCIe cards is the existence of something called a "PCIe switch chip". These chips are responsible for receiving PCIe lanes from the motherboard and splitting into multiple devices; in this case, M.2 NVMe drives. M.2 to PCIe RAID cards have these PCIe switch chips, and are typically marketed as being "no PCIe bifurcation needed" (more on that later). Proper M.2 to PCIe RAID cards are usually hassle-free as they can offer hardware-level RAIDs and are plug-and-play while being cross-compatible with various platforms (including Mac desktops with PCIe slots!), but it comes at a hefty price tag, with even the cheapest 4-drive enclosures reaching $200. Cheaper cards typically support only up to PCIe 3.0 speeds (the version is dependent on what the onboard PCIe switch chip supports) and prices skyrocket even further if you seek PCIe 4.0 speeds. M.2 to PCIe adapters are a more budget-friendly option that only has multiple M.2 slots and does not feature an onboard PCIe switch chip. Now, this type of card is not plug-and-play, and requires a BIOS level configuration called "PCIe bifurcation". This feature allows for you to configure the x16 slot (usually the first PCIe slot for most consumer motherboards) to be split into multiple separate lanes, such as x8x8, x8x4x4 and x4x4x4x4. While most modern consumer motherboards, except for some extremely basic ones, support PCIe bifurcation, the freedom to which you can configure depends on the platform and the CPU. For Intel 1200 and 1700 platforms, PCIe bifurcation is limited to x8x8, meaning that the motherboard can only detect up to 2 NVMe drives using an M.2 to PCIe adapter. For AMD AM4 and AM5 platforms, you are given a more generous option of x8x8, x8x4x4 and x4x4x4x4, so AMD platforms can detect all 4 NVMe drives using x4x4x4x4. However, if your CPU is a G-series APU, x4x4x4x4 bifurcation is not available and the most you can get is x8x4x4, so AM4 APU desktops can detect at most 3 NVMe drives using this method. Now, the biggest issue with M.2 to PCIe adapters is that the availability of PCIe bifurcation heavily depends on whether your motherboard supports it in the first place, and there is no easy way of getting this information if the motherboard manufacturer does not include it in the specifications. The only manufacturer I could find that keeps track of all bifurcation options is ASUS, who is probably keen on making their M.2 Hyper PCIe adapter as forwards compatible as possible, and you can find such information on either the specs or support pages. For the rest of the motherboards, you need some other deviant methods involving the motherboard's BIOS. (I will leave this up to the reader to google it since it is way beyond the scope of both this comment and my knowledge.) As it stands, trying to expand your M.2 drives using PCie slots is quite an adventure where either your wallet will suffer or your brain will. However, if you are up for the challenge, it can be a long-term solution to storing your data while retaining the swift speeds that PCIe interfaces can offer.

I was wondering if you have made any best bang for buck videos using the workstation platform?

it would be great if you talk about hardware for Unreal Engine for creators.

good explanation ty

Very Good! Thank U!

Thank you so clear explanation Can you next explain motherboards and how to choose a motherboard what expansions integrated or slots to look out for plz

Thank you!!!

Oh one thing you forgot to mention is that a PCIe Gen 4 GPU will switch down the Gen speed when it is not used in power saving mode. This frees out the lanes for M,2 SSDs to run fast if they had the x4 lane speed configured. Also the CHipset has a PCIe bridge function that can multiplex more physical lanes but they dynamically share the available lane bandwidth. Latency included as well due to the extra hop to the CPU controllers. Rule of thumb in p[ower consumption is the higher the Gen type, the more power they consume!.

How do you use cables to prevent the GPU's from covering up the lanes? How do you power two 4090's? It would be cool to see a video where you build a workstation with two GPU's. Thanks for the great info in these types of videos

100 agree. Best bang for your buck as a CC is the lowest core count TR PRO. The 128 lanes is a game changer. the new Xeon are priced way out of most budgets due to the RDIMM ram.

Great visual reference for the PCI lanes! Now whenever I say or hear it I'm going to see Tron Legacy!😅

This. This right here is why I moved to a Treadripper build. Got my 5965WX last week and the only surprise I have so far is how smooth windows 11 actually is. But yeah, that expansion slot freedome is a godsend. Grabbing a 2nd GPU soon and a capture card to fillout the rest, but damn!

When the CPU has inbuilt graphics, then is the PCI free lanes used by other peripherals or those 16 lanes are still kept for graphics card?

Hey Sarge, it seems that even with the best consumer level stuff if you plan to do any serious 4k+ 6k+ workflows, rendering etc. One should probably look at saving$ & going straight for a workstation type setup ? I know that sends the budget into the stratosphere. With YOUR HELP (thank you)...I have built a nice I91300k w/Asus 790mb Intel ArcA770 16 gb card...but do get hitching, bottlenecks, rubberbanding from time to time working with 5.3k off the go pros etc. It is a huge improvement working on the rig compared to the 8 year old laptop I had..

question about M2 drives~ I'm building an AMD 7700x pc with ASRock B650 MB, it has a gen 5 pcie slot, also a gen 4 & gen 3 slots, but only the gen 5 has a heat sink... I have a 1 tb m2.0 gen 3, and getting a new one gen 4, which slots should i use for both?

i've actually been looking at one of these CPUs for a future workstation at home. I'm not a creator or 3D renderer but I might have to render some things for work. Most of what I'll do will consist of AI and in general HPC which will take a lot of processing power and VRAM So i'm thinking of getting a Lenovo ThinkStation P620 with a 32 cores 5975wx CPU, 128 GB of RAM that i'll probably expand later and a dual A6000 GPU combo. Most likely gonna dual boot too to have Windows for anything video related and Linux for anything coding related

What about laptop's lanes? for example Ryzen 7 5800H?

Hi, good people. Could it be ok to build an editing PC in 2023 using amd ryzen 3950x? Could it be worth it ? Just working on 4k and 1080 footage ?

I think a more accurate way to describe it is that the number of lanes equate to the lanes of a highway, while the generation is the speed limit of that highway. Each generation is double the speed of the last, but has to run at the lowest speed of the device or the endpoint (whichever is slowest).

I have a question...if I have a 7900XT running on a PCIe 3.0 board, how much am I actually losing in performance without 4.0 available? I have a 9900K so it's probably getting time to upgrade soon, maybe later this year, but I'm just curious. I have 3 M.2's populated on the board too, which probably doesn't help lol

Does the CPU have dedicated lanes to communicate with the chipset?

so lets say i use a x670e motherboard and want to use 2 gpus. 1st gpu is handled by the cpu and the 2nd gpu is handled by the chipset?

how can i tell whast is using my lanes? for example ..after the GPU what is going on the remaining CPU lanes and what is using the chipset lanes.. can devices be assigned CPU lanes specifically? Assuming CPU lanes provide better data tranfers.. lets say i buy a faster m.2 and a slower one.. can i assign the faster m.2 to the remaining CPU lanes and leave the slower one to be used my the chipset? Thank you!!

This is why I'm still running an X299 system. It's not expensive like a Xeon, but has way more PCIE lanes. I'm running an i9-7960X so it has 44 PCIe lanes. I do photogrammetry that uses CUDA cores to accelerate the calculations to make 3D models from photos. So I run a 3070 Ti on my primary slot, and two GTX-690 cards on other slots. The GTX-690 is a dual GTX-680. So I have 5 GPU cores in my system and the two 690's have a total of the same number of CUDA cores as my 3070 Ti. Currently the first 690 is on the second X16 slot and the third is on the X4 slot. That's ok because I don't really need it to be running X16 on the second and third card. I also have a Tesla K80 datacenter GPU that I'm hoping to add as well. The problem is drivers. Windows doesn't like using multiple GPU drivers. To get the 3070 Ti and the 690s to all work I had to go back to nVidia driver version 471.41. That was the last driver that supported the 30 series AND the older 690's. Once I upgrade to a 40 series I probably won't be able to use the 690's anymore. I MIGHT be able to use the Tesla K80 though since it's a completely different kind of card. Not sure. I would probably be ok just using the chipset to feed the second and third cards on a newer system, but it's kind of nice knowing I have all that bandwidth available. The only reason I didn't put the third card on the last X16 slot (which is actually only an X8 electrically) is simply because the riser cables are too fat and I ran out of room.

Hey. What would you recommend if you need the fastest singlecore GPU possible, but also need to run 2 - 3 GPU for rendering?

I didn't understand one thing, does anything physically change between slot types?

Would an high end AM5 APU benefit from having gen 5.0 pci-e lanes instead as AMD planned to have it 4.0, when it's putted on gen 5.0 capable motherboard ?

Very nice video

how motherboard know which Gen is slot? example B450 is Gen3, but if we put 5000 series cpu, will GPU rtx4090 work in Gen3 standard or Gen4?? Because CPU support gen4??? lanes go directly to CPU. How that work??

This is great info. I wish I had known this before buying an alienware laptop with the graphics amplifier. I probably would have considered a threadripper lenovo workstation.

hi can you make video pc build with intel xeon w 3400 😄

You don't NEED more, you WANT more

LGA1700 CPUs (12, 13, 14 gen) only have 16 lanes of pcie 5.0. That's why on MBs that support an m.2 pcie 5.0 slot if you populate that it will automatically switch to x8 for the GPU. So directly from CPU there are 16 lanes gen 5 and 4 lanes of gen 4 (plus additional x8 gen 4 lanes for connection with the chipset).

Hi everyone I have an Intel Celeron N2840 2.16GHz with 8gb of ram ddr3. RU-vid buffers when watching 1080p videos. I have noticed if I lower the video resolution 360p the CPU drops and no longer stays at 100%. Is this a CPU, and GPU issue?.

I was hoping to get a question answered by this video, but I’m afraid it didn’t. I have a 5900x on a phantom gaming x570 MoBo and I’m running a 3070 and 2 NVMe drives, am I short on lanes? If so, what should I be experiencing, such as slowing down somewhere? This is really my first PC and I don’t quite understand the fine aspects of a PC. I know my CPU has 20 lanes, but then he confused me by saying MoBos can alleviate bottlenecks some how with their chipsets and I got confused.

Why is the Chip-Set type and features only emphasized with PC Motherboards? When I look at Laptops, I might see if they support Thunderbolt 4, and such, but they never mention the Chip-Set, like they do with Motherboards.

But dont GPUs operate in the 16x pcie slot at only 8x band width?

Yes

The GPUs are taking too much space on the motherboards. Could you show external connectors that will maximize the slots without loosing speed?

Please can the gigabyte B550 vision D work with the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 cpu

well done video! for illustration purposes, I'd rather recommend using trains instead of cars in way like this: motherboard is a town, cpu is main train station, chipset is secondary train station, each lane is a railway line, PCIe generation is amount of wagons a train can deliver ;)

Let's say a gpu uses 16 Gen 5's. Can you maybe the just use 32 Gen 4's to get the same amount of "highway" since Gen 4 is half the size? Or does it not work like that?

As it is getting into how many pcie lanes you have you also have to look at where is the pcie signaling clock as plugging in pcie 3 into pcie 5 then pcie 4 into pcie 5 then pcie 5 into pcie 5 if all 3 slots are on the same signaling clock then everything will run at pcie 3 speeds. It mostly is fixed now by having each slot on a different signaling clock but on same boards bifurcation will allow you to have more slots though less lanes per slot they will also all run at the same pcie generation. The way the ASUS Pro WS W790-E got around it is the CPU has enough lanes that everything has their own pcie 5.0 lanes from the CPU and thus no bifurcation. Now it is a 1300USD board and the CPU for that to be so is on the Xeon W-3400 series so starting at 1700USD and goes up from there. It isn't a cheap system but if you need everything to have direct to CPU pcie lanes and enough lanes for everything to not have to share it is going to cost you. He got how the rear I/O is connected wrong. The rear I/O the video out is directly connected to the CPU, most if not all USB ports are connected to a USB controller then the CPU , the rear I/O NIC to a network controller then to the CPU. The audio is connected to the audio chip then to the CPU. We have been moving away from connecting to the south bridge as it is slower.

Do you will comparison 14900K + two RTX4090 VS Threadripper 7960X + two RTX4090? Because I know many videographers who thinking add one more GPU to their system but they don't know about PCI lanes... So comparison would be very interesting. Most interesting codecs are RED RAW, BRAW, H264 422 10bit all-i and H265 422 and 420 10bit long-gop

I use a videocard that runs at X8 on my X570 ProArt with the 5900X - so I can have all my NVMEs running at X4 speeds .

i don't know if i am dumb for asking this but do the S in the chipset name is a better variant or is it just marketing? for example x570S

Do you know ANY motherboard that can do PCIe bifurcation (x4x4x4x4) for 2 of their x16 pcie slots? thinking... 16 lanes of pcie (x4x4x4x4) - first card carrying m.2's 16 lanes of pcie (x4x4x4x4) - second card carrying m.2's 4 lanes of pcie - m.2 boot device 1 lane of pcie - video card 3 lanes of pcie- other motherboard things/NIC etc === 40 lanes. Haswell XEON? 2650Lv3? or similar? so, 8x 4tb m.2 drives with 2 redundant ones.. = 6 drives worth of storage. = 24tb? Is this a reasonable thing? and also, is it a possible thing

The Z790 Aero G can only do x16 to directly to CPU on PCIe 5, 4x on PCIe 4 to the CPU (M2A_CPU m.2 slot). There are actually two m.2 slots that hit the CPU, one is the PCIe 4 one, other other is a PCIe 5 one. But if you use the PCIe 5 one (M2C_CPU), then the first PCIe slot operates at 8x only, wasting even more lanes :/

Why I am edging toward threadripper. Not because cores but lanes. Lower number of cores to 12, make it the F version, then much lower tdp too. Great for desktop that needs lanes not cores.

I see now that the difference between Server Xeon processor and Workstation Xeon processors are the number of pcie lanes (server platinum xeon 80 lanes, xeon w-2400 64 lanes for workstation, xeon x-3400 112 lanes for workstation). But with a motherboard that is designed for workstation purpose but accepts the Xeon Server (which can be found cheaply than workstation Xeons) we get better performance at lower cost.

i wanted to know what slot to use for m.2 ? pcie 4.0 from chipset or cpu while having an rtx 3060 ti already in the pcie 5 slot. can we use both gpu and 1 m.2 ssd in the pcie from CPU simeltaneously on a b760 mother board? do gpu uses all the 16 lanes and wont spare any for the m.2 form the cpu?

Loads of tests have shown. The difference in pie 3.0 and 4.0 as far as GPU is minimal if not none.

I'm rebuilding my NAS with an Epyc CPU/mobo for this exact reason. Could have spend less on consumer stuff but I need 10gb LAN, HBA and a 4x NVME SSD card. With all those thrown in I still have PCIE slots left for a GPU if I need it.

There was a reason long ago I made a move from the intel 3770k 4 core 8 threads with 16 pcie lanes and dual channel memory to a 4930k 6 core, 12 threads with 40 pcie lanes and 4 channel memory.. not sure why Intel went away from these type chips.. I guess they just wanted to short us from having real connectivity.. I can still run 3 way sli with my machine.. LOL but until Intel stops being cheap with the pcie lanes, I am not buying.. and my old board for the 4930k does not have any of the m.2 slots on them.. it just has the older 6 gbs sata connects

So i have a creator question, i have a 3060 as thats the best creator gpu i could personally afford for now, i would like to get good cpu now n upgrade gpu later... i was considering the 13900k as its the best creator one thats under $1000 xD so i wouldn't have to worry bout future cpu costs for long time n focus only on gpu costs... but im worried cuz i hear for work stations theres a delay... n i dont know how much that will effect me.. i do lots of video editing... DaVinci, premiere, photoshop ect... n i don't want to be hindered / delayed... should i just get 10th gen til intel fixes it... or just get the 13900k

Dang, I just realized that I put a RTX 3070 into my pc which is 6yrs old. That card has a pcie 4.0 but my cpu is an old until 5820 which works well, but it's pcie 3.0 lol So that means my card is being bottleneck. Lol. Awesome information buddy

What MB/RAM/CPU/GPU would I need to maintain a stable setup for live streaming while playing CS2 960p/1080p/1440p, playing low settings to gain as much fps as possible for competitive play. I would prefer a micro MB so I can make it easier to carry around for lan tournaments.

trx50 amd 7990x 5,1ghz 96 core 192thred ddr5 qua canal

I still have 20 of gen 3