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I am currently using this motherboard (http://www.bestdirect.ca/products/230607/ASUS/Rampage_III_Formula/) which has 3 x16 PCI-E slots. I am running my computer in SLI with my two vid cards, and I want to buy an onboard SSD (PCI-E x4). Will it be compatible? If it is, or it's not, can you explain.

Thank you!

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    This should probably be asked on superuser
    – Shaded
    Jan 5, 2011 at 13:47
  • So this means, that you can have 3 x16 components but even if the motherboard handles it, you will never be able to run it full speed. In another situation, if I had a motherboard with a 4x pci-e slot. Would a x16 pci-e component work in that slot but only with 4 lanes, or it will simply not work?
    – Burnzy
    Jan 5, 2011 at 20:37

2 Answers 2

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The short answer: yes.

As you can reed in the technical description, using all 3 PCIe connectors will drop your lanes for the second vid card from x16 to x8 because the 3rd slot is used. In this case you will get x16/x8/x4 -- im not sure if the motherboard supports x16/x12/x4.

Ask at https://superuser.com/ next time.

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For the second question, there is a thing which needs to be clarified.

PCI-E slot types are determined by mechanical and electrical connections. For x16 component to fit into a slot, you need an x16 mechanical slot. That slot on the inside may even be x1 electrically, but mechanically it needs to be x16 for the component to be placed into it.

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  • To be fair, you can (carefully) dremel out the back of the slot and fit a 16x device into a 1x connector. Some motherboards already have these. Jan 9, 2012 at 17:18

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