PCIe
The high-speed interface standard that connects a graphics card to the motherboard, defined by both physical slot size and the number of electrical lanes.
PCIe, short for Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, is the standard interface that connects expansion cards such as GPUs to a motherboard. It is described by two numbers: the physical slot length (x1, x4, x8, x16) and the number of electrical lanes actually wired to it, which may be fewer than the slot length suggests. PCIe also has generations, such as Gen3 and Gen4, that double bandwidth each step. For Malairte mining, the link carries little traffic once mining starts, so a GPU running at reduced lane width performs almost identically to one at full x16. This lets home miners use boards whose secondary slots run at x4, and to mount cards remotely using PCIe risers.