S10 with SAS/RAID and assorted other questions

[psuturtle Lenovo Staff]

Careful...you're mixing technologies (PCIe vs PCI). 

Here's the slot definitions (starting near the CPU and working down):

Slot 1 = no slot

Slot 2 = PCIe x16, gen2

Slot 3 = no slot

Slot 4 = PCIe x16, gen2

Slot 5 = PCI v2.3

Slot 6 = PCIe x4 (x16 mechanical), gen1

Slot 7 = PCI v2.3

I think the Bearlake-X chipset was limited to 32 lanes of gen2 PCIe support, which correlates to the above data.

[BoHick]

actually i was being lazy using PCI/e, meaning PCIe and PCI - in future i won't take shortcuts

thx for the clarification - pity about the PCIe x4 slot, but that's how the cowpat crumbles

i asked becaue i ordered a unit for the 3.5" bay that has a card reader and 4 USB 3.0 ports and it plugs into a gen 2 PCIe slot, which in this case will mean my extra video slot

[erik Community SuperMod]

unless you're planning to constantly saturate the card with more than 1000 MB/sec worth of data transfers then the x4 slot is fine.   PCIe 2.0 devices are backward compatible with 1.0 slots.

for your purposes i'd be willing to bet this is a non-issue.   choose whichever slot makes more sense based on location rather than maximum sustained transfer speed.

(edit: typo)

[BoHick]

brilliant - no sacrifices required - appreciate the reality check/low down on the functionality of the slots and i think that level of saturation will be well beyond my SOP: as always, much appreciated