Yeah this is exactly it. Mechanical x8, but electrically x4 -- infact if you zoom into the pic you can see that the signal pairs on the last 4 lanes are not connected to anything -- only the grounds connect to the ground plane. Also you can see the 4 lane pairs running up the board from the first 4 lanes in the connector.
If it's only x4 electrically I'll admit to being puzzled about contacts for lanes 5-8 being plated even if they only wanted the longer connector for enhanced mechanical stability.
You can also count the number of shorter sense (PRSNT2#) pins... the first denotes x1, second x4, third x8, fourth x16. I'm not entirely sure whether it's the motherboard or card that uses pin1a (PRSNT1#) on the opposite side connected with the furthest back of the PRSNT2# pins to figure out how many electrical lanes to utilize, but it's how either the card or motherboard figures out how big of a card or how big of a slot they're mated to.
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stux - Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - link
Looks like plenty of Power Loss Protection capacitors too.Is that AIC x8 or x4?
DanNeely - Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - link
x8. In x4 the long segment of the connector is only about 2x as big as the short segment.bill.rookard - Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - link
Are you sure about that? Zooming on the picture it specifically says 'PCI Express x4 Gen 3'... :-/evilspoons - Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - link
I was about to say the same, but noticed you beat me to it.It's possible they put the x8 slot in to prevent damage (more physical support) but it's only electrically an x4 device.
extide - Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - link
Yeah this is exactly it. Mechanical x8, but electrically x4 -- infact if you zoom into the pic you can see that the signal pairs on the last 4 lanes are not connected to anything -- only the grounds connect to the ground plane. Also you can see the 4 lane pairs running up the board from the first 4 lanes in the connector.DanNeely - Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - link
It's a definite mechanical x8. Compare the length of the connector to a physical x4 slot (top position on the board):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PCIExpress.jpg
or a physical x4 card:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PCIe_card_full_...
or the amount of a mechanical x16 electrical x8 connector that has pins on it:
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/10521/W4100.jpg
If it's only x4 electrically I'll admit to being puzzled about contacts for lanes 5-8 being plated even if they only wanted the longer connector for enhanced mechanical stability.
infowolfe - Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - link
You can also count the number of shorter sense (PRSNT2#) pins... the first denotes x1, second x4, third x8, fourth x16. I'm not entirely sure whether it's the motherboard or card that uses pin1a (PRSNT1#) on the opposite side connected with the furthest back of the PRSNT2# pins to figure out how many electrical lanes to utilize, but it's how either the card or motherboard figures out how big of a card or how big of a slot they're mated to.Derek712 - Wednesday, July 27, 2016 - link
Those write IOPS are really low. I hope their price is competitive or I'll just settle for the 960 Pro when it comes out.Laststop311 - Saturday, July 30, 2016 - link
that 2TB m2 drive is looking so nice. Perfect size to eliminate all sata cabling in builds now.