[ennogs]

I am going to have a new PC built when the i9-11900K processors and Z590 motherboards are out. I am currently planning what components I am getting.

I am going to re-use my sound card and 4 port USB3 PCI Express card from my current PC.

I am right in saying I need a Z590 motherboard with 3 PCI Express slots and one PCI slot for the following components

RTX 3080 graphics card

Asus Essence STX II 7.1 soundcard (with mainboard and daughterboard)
Essence STX II 7.1｜Sound Cards｜ASUS United Kingdom

StarTech 4-Port PCI Express USB 3.0 Card
4 Port PCI Express USB 3.0 Card - 3 + 1 - USB 3.0 Cards | United Kingdom

 

[The Pook]

neither of those are PCI and if you do need PCI then you're SOL on anything past Z170, lol.

 

[Chandlermaki]

You need as many PCIe slots as you have PCIe cards you want to use, which seems to be 4 based on your post.

Standard PCI is very much abandoned and has been for the better part of a decade.

 

[Asmodian]

4 slots total, that daughterboard for the sound card also needs a PCIe x1 slot for mounting.

You need these PCIe slots:
1 x16 slot for the GPU
3 x1 slots for the rest.

x1 cards work fine in x4 or x16 slots too.

Many boards should accommodate this but make sure you have two x1 or x4 slots. It is common to have two of the x16 slots wired together so if you use the second one it takes 8 lanes away from the GPU. It would be sad to steal 8 lanes from the GPU to power a USB card. That said you could put the daughter card in this slot since it is only using the PCIe slot for mounting.

Another point is do you really want the USB card? Look for a motherboard with lots of USB instead, almost all Z590 motherboards will come with LOTS of USB ports available if you include internal headers and the controllers are better today than what is on that card. It is probably better to leave it with your old motherboard.

 

[mattliston]

Put the sound card and USB3 card in the lowest PCIE slots available. This should ensure they use the chipset's PCIE lanes rather than the cpu's lanes.

That way you have a guaranteed cpu PCIE lane travel for teh graphics card and still have lanes leftover for any M.2 drives on the motherboard