discussion i want x16 on my GPU

[fightingfi]

using this

B650 AORUS ELITE AX (rev. 1.0/1.1) and this ,​

Sapphire 11325-02-20G Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE Gaming Graphics Card with 16GB GDDR6, AMD RDNA 3​

My question now is if i ONLY use the top M.2 drive and remove all other drives and use a 4tb for everything i do just the first slot M.2 drive will that give my gpu the full x16 speeds?

 

[freeagent]

Problems with x8?

Or benchmarks showing slightly lower numbers?

 

[sswilson]

The manual is not very clear when it comes to what slots to use, but if I'm reading that block diagram correctly you want your Primary (gen 5 if you've got one) drive in M2A, and your secondary (gen 4) in M2C (lowest slot). The block diagram looks to me like M2B "might" be X2 depending on your CPU?

Either way, if you're using two drives then the best way to ensure that the secondary one isn't taking bandwidth away from the video card is to use the lowest slot which comes off of the chipset.




Edit: And yes, in answer to the actual question you asked.... if you're only using one drive then the top slot is the one to use. If you want to add a second one the lowest slot shouldn't affect your GPU slot speed. The middle slot is questionable.