question about pci-e slots

[LyNX31]

sorry if this question is noobish but i dont have experience with pci-e yet and i ordered this motherboard.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813152049#DetailSpecs

it has 3 pci express slots one says x16 the other 2 are x1? what is the difference b/w the two and which one would i plug my graphics card into?

thanks guys

 

[bcoupland]

The x16 slot is for the video card. The x1 (or x4 slots, if the VNF4 has them) are for other add-on cards like sound card, NIC, hard drive controllers, etc.

 

[LyNX31]

thanks bcoupland 🙂

 

[phisrow]

Graphics cards go in x16 slots(at least for the moment, I'm sure that in the future we'll see x1 cards that fill the same niche as PCI graphics cards do today).

PCIe is designed around bidirectional serial channels called lanes. A 1x slot is mechanically and electrically a connector for one lane. A x16 slot is mechanically 16 lanes, sometimes electrically only 4 or 8, depending on the board(notably, for SLI purposes, some boards split the limited number of lanes that their chipsets provide between two x16 connectors, as current cards don't really need more than x8(electrically, mechanically they need x16)).

On other boards, you might also run into the occasional x4, mostly for serious network cards and niceish raid controllers.