1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,840 You wouldn't be able to connect high speed components like graphics cards and NVMe drives to your computer 2 00:00:05,840 --> 00:00:09,560 without the PCI Express bus that's been a fixed on our motherboards 3 00:00:09,560 --> 00:00:14,720 for over a decade now. If you're not familiar, you can connect your devices via PCI Express 4 00:00:14,720 --> 00:00:18,240 in a few ways. Most commonly, you insert an adapter card 5 00:00:18,240 --> 00:00:24,720 into one of these slots right here or an M.2 SSD right over here. 6 00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:29,040 But did you know that not all PCI Express connections 7 00:00:29,120 --> 00:00:33,160 are the same? You see PCI Express can connect your devices 8 00:00:33,160 --> 00:00:40,480 either directly to your CPU or to the chip set which sits between your CPU 9 00:00:40,480 --> 00:00:46,280 and some of your other components like your Ethernet jack or some USB ports. 10 00:00:46,280 --> 00:00:50,560 This might be a point of confusion if you've seen a motherboard that supports say 11 00:00:50,560 --> 00:00:55,800 40 PCI Express lanes, but the CPU can only run one graphics card 12 00:00:55,800 --> 00:00:59,720 at 16X speed or two cards at 8X speed each. 13 00:00:59,720 --> 00:01:05,840 I mean, shouldn't all of those PCI Express lanes let you plug in more than just one or two adapter cards? 14 00:01:05,840 --> 00:01:11,760 This is where the difference between chip set versus CPU PCI Express lanes comes into play. 15 00:01:11,760 --> 00:01:15,880 Most consumer CPUs will have 16 or 20 lanes 16 00:01:15,880 --> 00:01:19,480 running directly off of them, which you should be using for your graphics card 17 00:01:19,480 --> 00:01:23,760 for the best performance. But then why is that better than using the lanes 18 00:01:23,760 --> 00:01:27,920 that come off the chip set? Well, one reason is that having the extra step 19 00:01:27,920 --> 00:01:31,320 of routing data through that chip set introduces latency 20 00:01:31,320 --> 00:01:35,880 which can slow down your performance. Perhaps a bigger reason though 21 00:01:35,880 --> 00:01:39,600 is the link that connects the chip set back to the CPU. 22 00:01:39,600 --> 00:01:45,320 You see, although you'll often see diagrams showing that 16 or 20 or even more PCI Express lanes 23 00:01:45,320 --> 00:01:49,520 come off of the chip set, the connection that it has to the CPU 24 00:01:49,520 --> 00:01:53,840 is actually quite narrow. It might be only four lanes wide. 25 00:01:53,840 --> 00:01:57,440 Now chip sets provide lots of lanes to other components and peripherals 26 00:01:57,440 --> 00:02:03,760 because of how many things connect to it. Firmware, SATA, audio, Ethernet, USB devices, 27 00:02:03,760 --> 00:02:07,480 but these are all either relatively low bandwidth 28 00:02:07,480 --> 00:02:10,760 applications or they're very unlikely 29 00:02:10,760 --> 00:02:17,760 to all be fully utilized at the same time. So having them bottlenecked as they send data to the CPU 30 00:02:17,760 --> 00:02:22,440 isn't all that big of a deal. That limited bandwidth can hurt you though 31 00:02:22,440 --> 00:02:27,880 if you try to connect something that moves considerably more data such as a graphics card 32 00:02:27,880 --> 00:02:31,320 while you're also trying to use all that other stuff. 33 00:02:31,320 --> 00:02:35,600 Now the long 16X PCI Express slots on your motherboard, 34 00:02:35,600 --> 00:02:39,240 those are typically connected directly to the CPU. 35 00:02:39,240 --> 00:02:43,280 So you don't have to worry too much about accidentally connecting a graphics card 36 00:02:43,280 --> 00:02:49,600 to your chip set. But because those usually too share the same 16 lanes, 37 00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:56,400 you can't run two cards in them at full speed unless you have a higher end CPU that supports more lanes. 38 00:02:56,400 --> 00:03:00,360 Additionally, if you have a standard 16 lane Intel CPU, 39 00:03:00,360 --> 00:03:04,720 this means that an NVMe drive installed in an M.2 slot on your board 40 00:03:04,720 --> 00:03:10,120 is going to be routed through the chip set. Now you shouldn't see a ton of performance loss, 41 00:03:10,120 --> 00:03:14,440 but the aforementioned latency plus any heavy network SATA 42 00:03:14,440 --> 00:03:20,240 or USB traffic being routed through those four lanes back to the CPU could result in some slowdowns 43 00:03:20,240 --> 00:03:25,320 depending on your workload. On a related note, this is actually why some SATA ports 44 00:03:25,320 --> 00:03:30,680 get disabled when you plug in an M.2 drive since those ports are also connected to the chip set 45 00:03:30,680 --> 00:03:34,160 and they share bandwidth. The good news though is that if you're trying to squeeze 46 00:03:34,160 --> 00:03:39,000 every ounce of performance out of a drive, Intel's upcoming 11th gen desktop CPUs 47 00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:42,640 are supposed to have 20 lanes coming directly off the CPU, 48 00:03:42,640 --> 00:03:46,080 four of which are meant to support an M.2 drive. 49 00:03:46,080 --> 00:03:53,160 And if you're on a Ryzen platform, you're in luck because you already have 20 or more lanes coming off the CPU. 50 00:03:53,160 --> 00:03:57,240 It's kind of like chip manufacturers widening the highway for us, 51 00:03:57,240 --> 00:04:01,880 but without the punitive speed limits. Thanks for watching guys, like, dislike, 52 00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:06,240 check out our other videos, leave a comment if you have a suggestion for a future video 53 00:04:06,240 --> 00:04:10,000 and don't forget to subscribe. Or you might miss the opportunity 54 00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:15,480 to buy this amazing guy's pad at DeltaT Store.com. Wow, you can tell it's winter, hey, the air's so dry. 55 00:04:16,080 --> 00:04:17,480 You hear the static?