How to stop PCIe bus switching on ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0?
The moment I felt the FPS jump from 45 up to a stable 65, I felt like I'd finally unlocked the hardware's actual potential. The ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0 was acting up with the game's streaming assets, causing the PCIe link to flip-flop between Gen3 and Gen2. This made the GPU throughput swing wildly between 12-16GB/s. I tried 'Maximum Performance' in the GPU drivers, but that only gave me 2 extra FPS while raising CPU temps by 8℃—not worth it. The real fix was updating to the latest BIOS and forcing the PCIe slot to 'Gen3' instead of 'Auto,' while disabling all board power-saving features. In 3DMark's storage benchmark, the bandwidth variance dropped to under 2%, and the stutters vanished. I almost bricked the board when a power outage hit during the BIOS flash, forcing me into CMOS recovery mode, but a manual CMOS clear saved me. Board temps are stable at 45-52℃. Data latency dropped by 12% and RAM stayed at 40-45℃.
