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    PCIe lanes question

    Discussion in '2015+ Alienware 13 / 15 / 17' started by gschneider, Aug 21, 2017.

  1. gschneider

    gschneider Notebook Evangelist

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    Hi all,

    This might be a silly question but I was wondering how pcie lanes work.

    For examples my 7700hq has 16 lanes.

    Current I have 8 lanes for GPU and 4 for one nvme drive and 4 for another nvme drive. That's all my lanes used up.

    My question is what if if add a thunder bolt drive where do the lanes get taken from? Also what happens in the reverse, if I remove all my nvme drives will my gpu then have all 16 lanes?

    It might seem silly but I couldn't find the answer online and I was just curious as to how it worked

    Thanks all
     
    gschneider, Aug 21, 2017
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  2. TLS2000

    TLS2000 Notebook Enthusiast

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    The chipset on the motherboard also supports 20 PCIe lanes.
     
    TLS2000, Aug 22, 2017
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  3. Rexcor300388

    Rexcor300388 Notebook Enthusiast

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    NVMe take lanes from chipset, not CPU, CPU lanes are used 8 for GPU and 4 for graphics amplifier.
     
    Rexcor300388, Aug 22, 2017
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  4. gschneider

    gschneider Notebook Evangelist

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    Ahhh that's interesting. I didn't know that you had lanes on the cpu and the motherboard.

    So if you have 4 for amp, 8 for gpu, what are the other 4 doing?
     
    gschneider, Aug 24, 2017
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