PCI Express 3.0 (PCIe 3.0)

PCIe 3.0 delivers 8 GT/s per lane and 32 GB/s bidirectional on a ×16 slot. Although superseded by PCIe 4.0 and 5.0, PCIe 3.0 remains a common interface for drives, networking cards, and legacy GPUs. All current-generation motherboards, CPUs, and GPUs are backward-compatible with PCIe 3.0 devices. Budget M.2 SSDs from WD (Blue SN570) and Crucial (P3) still target PCIe 3.0 NVMe for cost optimization.