How best to setup my cards given motherboard

[stepmback]

I should planned this better.

 

I have an intel i9 14900 chip in a gigabyte motherboard that has 5 PCIE slots. Only one of the slots is x4 and that currently has my HBA card. However, I also have a SFP+ card that needs a x4 slot to get 10gbe. I do have a free x16 slot which I am considering putting my HBA card in however I am concerned that if I do that my NVME will be affected.

 

* I don't plan on gaming in the future but I had wanted to leave the slot open to future proof.

 

 

Thoughts?

 

Here is a link to the MB I have: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z790-EAGLE-AX-rev-1x#kf

 

 

mb_manual_z790-eagle-ax_1002_e.pdf

Edited September 17, 2024 by stepmback

[Veah]

Looks like the bottom 2 x16 slots are wired at x4.  One is PCIEX 4.0 and the other is 3.0.  Both are fast enough for either card you mention.  If you can make them fit, put them both on bottom.

[stepmback]

That is the problem. One of the bottom two 16x slots is x1 and the other is x4. I have the HBA in x4 and the SFP in x1. The SFP works but getting like 180MB transfer speeds. I swapped the cards because the HBA was taking days to do a parity check. After doing that I noticed the drop in speeds on the SFP.

 

Edited September 17, 2024 by stepmback

[Veah]

You are right.  I read it wrong in the link.

 

Throw one of them on top.  Sounds like you are using the igpu so you dont need a gpu in there.

If you are forced to choose to put one of those cards in the x1 slot, I would probably do the hba provided it is full of hdds and not fast ssd.

[stepmback]

If i move the HBA to the x16 slot would that affect my nvme drive and its speeds etc?

[Veah]

I do not see anything indicating that.  The top slot is connected directly to cpu like most mb are.  The rest get bandwidth doled out by the chipset.  If the only cards you are running are the two mentioned, you will not run into any problems.  Its alot of mb for just those 2 cards.

 

[stepmback]

Thanks. I moved the card and it booted fine. All the drives are showing. Everything is running smooth and VMs started. I even did some testing and am getting 800 MB/s from my workstation to unraid serve (nvme cache is amazing). Getting  180BM from server (array) to workstation but that is expected because of old drives. Have not run a parity check so we will see how that goes in a couple weeks. If I do go with a graphics card I guess I will move the HBA to the x1 slot and live with a couple day parity check.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

My next thing to tinker on is to see if I can actually get my Windows 11 VM to connect at 10gb.