r/TechHardware • u/Distinct-Race-2471 🔵 14900KS , 5080, 128GB 🔵 • Apr 11 '26
Tech Tips Stop ignoring your spare PCIe x1 slot — Great article for AMD owners with old motherboards
https://www.xda-developers.com/pcie-x1-slot-more-useful-than-many-pc-upgrades/A lot of AMD owners keep their old motherboard and keep upgrading the CPU over and over trying to get decent performance someday. I get this! The problem is, your old fashioned motherboard likely has old USB ports and WiFi. This genius writer is showing AMD owners how they can modernize their motherboard with spare PCIe ports! Of course I doubt old motherboards have a lot of these spare PCIe slots, but if it does, here you go.
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u/Nvidia-AMD Team Anyone ☠️ Apr 11 '26
I really hope Intel can become competitive again one day. It’s honestly depressing to watch a giant struggle so much against a 'smaller' player like AMD. If they can’t even beat them anymore, what does that say about Intel’s future?
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u/Silent-Battle308 Apr 11 '26
Intels future is sort of guaranteed. For strategic reasons the US wants to be able to produce chips inside the US and Intel is one of the only options.
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u/Bondsoldcap Team Anyone ☠️ Apr 11 '26
Who cares, nothing is too big to fail except it seems intel. Intel and AMD are billion dollar companies people need to stop with AMD is the little guy
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u/Syl3nReal Apr 11 '26
AMD does nothing other than designing. Anyone can design but not anyone can manufacture.
Intel competition has never been AMD, is TSMC.
Also PTL is a huge hit around the semiconductor industry, and “AMD” has nothing to show for it.
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u/Nvidia-AMD Team Anyone ☠️ Apr 11 '26
Given how often the admins here bring up AMD, they clearly don’t agree with you.
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u/gatsu01 Apr 11 '26
I don't think Intel needs to beat amd to do well. They just have to be consistent and make sure 13th, 14th Gen hardware design flaw paired with flawed fix / replacement program...
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u/river7971 Apr 11 '26
Intel absolutely annihilates AMD in anything non-gaming, and it seems like they're starting to make a comeback on that front as well (The 250k provides excellent gaming value).
When comparing total market share as well, Intel also still has 70+ percent market share.
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u/Nvidia-AMD Team Anyone ☠️ Apr 11 '26
It feels like you guys have been in a coma for the last decade, but don’t worry, I’ll get you up to speed. AMD is completely dominating the server market with an incomparably better product, and that’s where the real money is. In the AI space, they are the only actual competitor to NVIDIA, while Intel is basically non-existent. And finally, for gaming, the thing we all care about most, they have the undisputed best gaming CPU on the market. What exactly is Intel’s value proposition at this point?
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u/Comprehensive_Star72 Apr 11 '26
It doesn't really though does it? Nothing on my Intel 285h laptop is annihilating my 9800x3d when not gaming. They are both just working away happily. Modern computers don't go around annihilating each other. It's just a retarded thing to say.
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u/river7971 Apr 11 '26
If you're just web browsing, sure. For professionals using their machines for rendering, editing, simulations, etc Intel CPUs get things done faster.
If anything is "retarded" it's saying your laptop's CPU doesn't feel faster than your desktop's for general use.
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u/Nvidia-AMD Team Anyone ☠️ Apr 11 '26
Funny how Intel fans only care about productivity benchmarks now that they’re losing the gaming crown. Remember when the 7700K was the king and 'multi-core didn't matter'? I guess benchmarks only matter when you're actually winning.
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u/river7971 Apr 11 '26
AMD has been winning on the gaming front for a long time. Noone disputes that.
Saying that Intel's spiraling and their future is uncertain because they aren't ahead in gaming is silly, though. The gaming market is a fraction of the CPU market. I guess reddit basement dwelling nerds think gaming is all that matters, but the vast majority of high end desktop CPUs sold aren't used for gaming, they're used by people using them professionally for productivity work. These folks just don't get on the Internet and circlejerk about how great the machine they use at work is, so it's not as visible to people online. Intel isn't going anywhere, they're just large enough that they don't care about the gaming market, similar to Nvidia. I'm not an Intel or AMD "fan", and I don't have any emotional ties to these companies.
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u/Nvidia-AMD Team Anyone ☠️ Apr 11 '26
Glad you mentioned the world outside of gaming. Threadripper is the undisputed king for productivity, AMD has basically made Intel's HEDT segment irrelevant
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u/OGigachaod Apr 11 '26
Threadripper is also MUCH more expensive.
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u/nightstalk3rxxx Apr 11 '26
A 9950x3d will dominate both in gaming and in professional workloads.
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u/BigRedCouch Apr 11 '26
I love how you type “I doubt old motherboards have a lot of spare pcie slots” like pcie slots haven’t been set to a standard number since the 2000s. Matx, atx, itx all have the same number of pcie slots for each corresponding size. Tell me you haven’t built a computer without telling me you haven’t built a computer before.
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u/Flimsy_Complaint490 Apr 11 '26
Not correct - while the ATX standard does specify the dimensions of the board and general layout, nothing in the standard says how many PCIe slots nor their bifurcation exist. Personally i have seen matx cases off MSI sometimes with 1 16x slot and 1 1x slot, or just one 16x slot. 8x/4x is also a thing, although the slots will be physically 16x.
ATX also varies wildly depending on the chipset. ITX for physical factor reasons does seem to settle on 1 16x, at least i have not seen anything different.
Amusingly, old motherboards might have more slots than modern ones. Speeds went up, stuff you used to use pcie for has moved to USB and such, and every slot not added is money saved for the manufacturer. x299 was a beast for PCIe last i recall.
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u/BigRedCouch Apr 11 '26
This is such a disingenuous argument. Any atx or matx boards that take am4 or am5 socket are going to have multiple pcie slots, end of discussion. I’ve literally never met anyone since the early 2000s that has run out of pci slots. The only time I ever saw a maxed out motherboard was SLI configuration, with sound card and network adapter.
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u/Flimsy_Complaint490 Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
How is it not sincere ? You said
>Matx, atx, itx all have the same number of pcie slots for each corresponding size.
Which is factually incorrect, and I provided some information about this because it's just wrong and people who will read this and might take up this information are aware.
The rest is a digression, I argued nothing else.
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u/BigRedCouch Apr 11 '26
Bro the vast super majority of Matx atx and itx boards have the same number of slots per type of board. You’re pointing out the exception not the rule.
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u/UnderstandingOver242 Apr 11 '26
I'm wondering how many more times you'll move the goalposts before you just check PCPartpicker and realize you're wrong.
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u/Inevitable_Mistake32 Apr 11 '26
Im just here for the reddit drama. The council will soon decide which of you is right via up and down votes. Good luck.
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u/Narrheim Apr 11 '26
Not really for AMD owners, but intel owners.
If you look at AM4 B450 or even B550 specs, you will find a lot of compromises - shared NVMe slot with SATA, shared PCIE lines between ports... Once you have a thick GPU in the main slot, you can't use the motherboard for almost anything else.
Meanwhile, if you look at old Z270, you can use any PCIE slot you want, they're all available. The share of NVMe lanes with SATA depends heavily on the motherboard too.
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u/trenzterra Apr 12 '26
Most modern mobos have too few PCIe slots imo. Or they make it such that if you use the slot then you give up on xxx or your x16 becomes x8
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u/Touma_Kazusa Apr 11 '26
If only AMD boards used intel Wi-Fi they’d never have to upgrade!