Hi,

 

I'll be purchasing an MSI Z490 Godlike motherboard in the next couple of weeks (probably overkill and more than I will ever need as a lite-gamer home-user) but should do be for the foreseeable. 

 

As I will be using the system to host an Emby server along with two Windows VM's, which in turn will need their own graphics, NIC's etc, the three PCIe slots are quickly utilised. 

 

How does everyone expand their setup? I've looked online and a simple riser card to split a PCIe slot to four, looks like it would drastically reduce the speed for the expanded slots. 

 

To be honest, it's no great shake to change the board for something that will give me better flexibility down the line, as long as it is a LGA1200 socket. 

 

Thanks. 

I have 5 pci-e slots, 3 are full length/width/16x (whatever the appropriate term is).

I have 2 Sata controller cards that require full length. I have a cheap gpu that is on a 1x to 16x slot adapter. I want to add a GPU for dedicated transcoding work (that will be the last full length slot).  Come to find out that the 16x slot isn't as important as the bandwidth the slot supports (which is why I was able to move my cheap gpu to a 1x-16x adapter - it doesn't need the bandwidth).  I was trying to add a 4 port ethernet adapter, but I need to determine how much bandwidth is appropriate for that, because all the add-in nic cards I've seen are full width.

If I had it to do over, I would have looked for 4 full-width slots that, even with all 4 occupied, the slowest should still be running at 8x speed.

5 minutes ago, whipdancer said:

I have 5 pci-e slots, 3 are full length/width/16x (whatever the appropriate term is).

I have 2 Sata controller cards that require full length. I have a cheap gpu that is on a 1x to 16x slot adapter. I want to add a GPU for dedicated transcoding work (that will be the last full length slot).  Come to find out that the 16x slot isn't as important as the bandwidth the slot supports (which is why I was able to move my cheap gpu to a 1x-16x adapter - it doesn't need the bandwidth).  I was trying to add a 4 port ethernet adapter, but I need to determine how much bandwidth is appropriate for that, because all the add-in nic cards I've seen are full width.

If I had it to do over, I would have looked for 4 full-width slots that, even with all 4 occupied, the slowest should still be running at 8x speed.

Many thanks for your advice.

 

I think I'll keep looking for a board with at least four slots then, I certainly want to keep my options open for later expansion. 👍

22 minutes ago, LoneTraveler said:

I think I'll keep looking for a board with at least four slots then, I certainly want to keep my options open for later expansion

Just because PCIe slots are on the board does not mean they can all be used.  It will depend on how they are populated and how many PCIe lanes each card needs.  You need to be concerned as well with the number of PCIe lanes overall the chipset/CPU can support.  The Z490/LGA1200 CPUs support a maximum of 24 PCIe lanes.

 

Often, the use of PCIe SSD/NVMe devices will disable PCIe slots depending on board architecture. 

1 hour ago, Hoopster said:

Just because PCIe slots are on the board does not mean they can all be used.  It will depend on how they are populated and how many PCIe lanes each card needs.  You need to be concerned as well with the number of PCIe lanes overall the chipset/CPU can support.  The Z490/LGA1200 CPUs support a maximum of 24 PCIe lanes.

 

Often, the use of PCIe SSD/NVMe devices will disable PCIe slots depending on board architecture. 

Thanks for the advice. I think I'm going to have to pour myself another whisky to get my head round these PCIe shenanigans. 

19 hours ago, Hoopster said:

Just because PCIe slots are on the board does not mean they can all be used.  It will depend on how they are populated and how many PCIe lanes each card needs.  You need to be concerned as well with the number of PCIe lanes overall the chipset/CPU can support.  The Z490/LGA1200 CPUs support a maximum of 24 PCIe lanes.

This is the clear explanation of what I was trying to convey.