How Many PCIe Slots Are There?

As of early 2021, most consumer motherboards have at least four PCIe slots. Higher-end motherboards may have more, and some gaming motherboards have as many as eight or even 12.

Some very high-end motherboards designed for workstations can have 16 or more PCIe slots.

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Why so many PCIe slots? For one thing, many people like to have multiple graphics cards for gaming or other purposes. With four or more graphics cards in a system, that means four or more PCIe slots will be needed.

Another reason for all those PCIe slots is the ever-growing list of devices that use the PCIe bus. In addition to graphics cards, there are now PCIe-based SSDs, WiFi cards, Thunderbolt 3 cards, and more that all need their own slot.

So how many PCIe slots do you need? If you want to build a basic gaming PC with a single graphics card, you can get away with just one or two PCIe slots. If you want to add multiple graphics cards or other devices that use the PCIe bus, you’ll need more slots.

And if you need the absolute maximum number of PCI Express devices in your system, you’ll want a motherboard with a ton of PCIe slots.