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PCIe 5.0 is nearly 4 years old and it's still virtually worthless in gaming PCs

Gen 4 stuff is not only cheaper, it's also better. Now that's progress for you.

The next round of new GPUs from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia may move to the newer spec but given that they've only just changed to Gen 4 in their latest generation of cards, there's a good chance that they won't. (Image credit: ASRock/Intel Corporation)So, if you're like me, and have that ASRock Z790 motherboard, no matter what GPU you use, if you stick an SSD into the first M.2 slot, then the card will be forced to run in PCIe 4.0 x8 mode (the same as Gen 3 x16). The reason is that games, applications, and even entire operating systems have all been designed around moving small amounts of data and only when needed, because most PCs don't have very fast storage.

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