In order to meet the expansion needs of industrial use fields, industrial computers will be equipped with PCIe slots. PCIe is a high-speed serial point-to-point dual-channel high-bandwidth transmission. The connected devices are allocated exclusive channel bandwidth and do not share bus bandwidth. It mainly supports active power management. Error reporting, end-to-end reliable transmission, hot plugging and quality of service (QOS) and other functions.
Now the PCIe slot has become the main expansion slot on the motherboard. Basically concentrated on PCIex1/x4/x8/x16, so what are the differences between these four slots?
1. PCIex16 slot
The PCIex16 slot is mainly used for graphics cards and RAID array cards. This slot has excellent compatibility and can be backward compatible with x1/x4/x8 level devices. It can be said that the PCIex16 slot is the universal slot of PCI-E. PCIex16 slots are often used for graphics cards, which are directly connected to the central processing unit and are physically located directly close to the CPU. In this way, data exchange between the graphics card and the processor can reduce delays and allow the system's performance to be fully utilized.
2. PCIex8 slot
For compatibility, PCIex8 slots are usually processed into PCIex16 slots, but only half of the data pins are valid, which means that the actual bandwidth is only half of the real PCIex16 slot. You can observe the motherboard wiring. There are no circuit connections in the second half of the x8, and even the pins are not soldered.
3. PCIex4 slot
Like the PCIex8 slot, for the sake of compatibility, most PCIex4 slots are now made into PCIex16 slots, or expanded into M.2 interfaces for installing M.2SSD, M.2 wireless network cards or other M.2 interface device, and the remaining expansion cards are left to the PCIex1 slot.
4. PCIex1 slot
The length of the PCIex1 slot is the shortest, only 25mm. Compared with the PCIex16 slot, its data pins are greatly reduced to 14. The bandwidth of the PCIex1 slot is usually provided by the motherboard chip. It is mainly used for independent network cards, independent sound cards, USB3.0/3.1 expansion cards, etc. The PCIex1 slot can even be equipped with a graphics card through an adapter cable. Mining or achieving multi-screen output.
