pcie2 shows occupied when empty
Printed From: ASRock.com
Category: Technical Support
Forum Name: Intel Motherboards
Forum Description: Question about ASRock Intel Motherboards
URL: https://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=18143
Printed Date: 29 Jul 2025 at 11:53pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: pcie2 shows occupied when empty
Posted By: gardenfrog99
Subject: pcie2 shows occupied when empty
Date Posted: 15 Feb 2021 at 9:05pm
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i have a ASRock B360M Pro 4. the pcie2 slot is broken. i use the pcie4 slot for my gpu. when i diagnose it says only 2x 3.0 instead of 16x 3.0 for my bus. any way to make sure i get 16x 3.0 for my pcie4 slot? like anyway to disable pcie2 slot or something? just want to use my gpu which is a 1080 ti to its fullest using the pcie4 slot on my mother board. thank you! |
Replies:
Posted By: gardenfrog99
Date Posted: 15 Feb 2021 at 11:25pm
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now it is saying 4x 3.0 |
Posted By: Xaltar
Date Posted: 17 Feb 2021 at 12:23am
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Hi Gardenfrog99 First up, the system will automatically lower the link speed when idle to save power. So if your GPU isn't being utilized by a demanding task it will lower to x2 then scale up depending on bandwidth needs, this is completely normal behavior. Secondly, the PCIe4 slot is only wired as x4 by the look of it, in other words it is not capable of x16 link speeds. This is a limitation of the intel B360 chipset. How is your primary x16 slot broken? Is there physical damage or is it just not recognizing the GPU? Please provide your full system specs so we know what you are working with. ------------- 
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Posted By: gardenfrog99
Date Posted: 17 Feb 2021 at 4:36am
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the pcie2 slot is completely ripped off due to damage during shipping. so it is gone. i thought read that it said it had x16 capability on slot 4 if slot 2 was empty. but maybe i understood incorrectly. it said it had 2 16x slots but slot 4 becomes x4 when slot 2 is occupied. i was thinking the damage of being completely ripped off was causing a false positive making it think slot 2 was occupied. so if i could turn of slot 2 manually somehow then maybe i could get x16 on slot 4. thank you for your help. if there is no way to get x16 out of slot 4 then it just is not going to happen. i have a 1080 ti - how much will i lose by not having x16 and only x4? thank you for your time. |
Posted By: Xaltar
Date Posted: 17 Feb 2021 at 4:24pm
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It should be fine, I doubt you would notice a difference. Bare in mind: PCIe 3.0 x4 is roughly equivalent to PCIe 2.0 x8 which is roughly equal to PCIe 1.0 x16 bandwidth wise. A lot of people say otherwise but actual benchmarks show just how small the hit is. In theory there should be a sizable hit but in practice it's almost always within the margin of error up to maybe a 10fps hit on a game already running at 100+ fps. I believe hardware unboxed on youtube did a comparison between x4, x8 and x16 some time back. Regardless, you won't see any difference in actual gameplay even in a worst case scenario. -------------
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Posted By: gardenfrog99
Date Posted: 18 Feb 2021 at 12:28am
| ok thanks...have a great one! |