wrote:
Case 1 x iBUYPOWER Snowblind Element [Restock Date: 11/27]
LED Fan Lighting 1 x 3x [RGB] Raidmax NV-R120B 120mm RGB LED Ring Fan
Case Lighting 1 x Snowblind White LEDs
Processor 1 x Intel® Core™ i7-8700K Processor (6x 3.70GHz/12MB L3 Cache)
Processor Cooling 1 x DEEPCOOL Captain 120EX Gamer Storm 120mm Liquid CPU Cooling System - RGB
Memory 1 x 16 GB [8 GB X2] DDR4-3000 Memory Module - Certified Major Brand Gaming Memory
Video Card 1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 - 8GB (VR-Ready) - FREE Upgrade to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 MSI ARMOR OC 8GB
Motherboard 1 x GIGABYTE Z370XP SLI -- RGB Fusion, 3x PCIe x16, 1x USB 3.1 Gen2, 6x USB 3.1 Gen1 [Intel Optane Ready]
Power Supply 1 x 800 Watt - Standard 80 PLUS Bronze - (includes White Sleeved Cables)
Primary Hard Drive 1 x 16 GB Intel® Optane™ Memory Accelerator M.2 PCIe NVMe + 1 TB 7200RPM Hard Drive - (OS Drive)
Data Hard Drive 1 x 1 TB Hard Drive -- 32MB Cache, 7200RPM, 6.0Gb/s - Single Drive
Sound Card 1 x 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard
Network Card 1 x Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)

New build list

Find a branded memory.

One where the reviews are good. You want what you're
buying to be "traceable".

If it's one thing I learned about unbranded DIMMs, it's
that they "drop like flies", with an MTBF of 18 months average.

You want a product that's branded, and has sufficient
reviews to spot trouble.

Even Crucial has made bum products. Initially their
Ballistix was pretty good, and they they fell on
hard times and the quality just wasn't there. They seemed
to be selecting the wrong materials for enthusiast memory.

We go through patches like this. And then one of the memory chip
companies will make something that meets spec with practically
no testing at all. And then all the branded enthusiast DIMMs
will be using that particular die and part number, to make
DIMMs.

As another example, at one time Winbond made some kickass
memory, that you could "overvolt to the sky". A 2.5V RAM
that would run at 3.6V say (use a little cooling). But
Winbond hasn't made anything like that in some time,
and more mainstream makers are preferred now. And the
silicon connecting to such things, isn't as tolerant as
it once was (i.e. 1.5V memory limited to no more
than 1.65V, in the DDR3 generation).

*******

The user manual doesn't have a block diagram. Some Gigabyte
boards show the block diagram for the system. Yours in this
case, would be something like this.

(What I downloaded to try and find a block diagram...)

http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList...70xp-sli_e.pdf

What the block diagram could look like...

dual ch, 4 DIMMs ------ CPU ------- (2) x8 wired video slots (SLI)
|
| DMI (four lane bus)
|
SATA ------- PCH (Z370)
|
+------ x4 (third big slot)
|
+------ (3) x1 slots
|
+------ (some NIC etc)

While the connectors are x16 long, the wiring is the thing.
It's possible if you use the top slot for video, the BW is
x16 in that case. It used to take four mux chips for
"bifurcation" logic, to split the total of x16 CPU lanes,
into (1) x16 or (2) x8 config. When you plug a video card
into the second video slot, it should run x8 in any case.

The DMI bus is a choke point. For example, if you run
an M.2 drive on the board, it's possible it uses a
significant portion of the DMI. There might be some
"cross" patterns that use too much bandwidth. But
the experience of most people seems to be, they
use one thing at a time, or the pattern is TX on
one item, RX on another (the busses are full duplex),
and there's no significant issue with throttling due to DMI.

Mainly it's an issue of "bookkeeping". My diagram above
isn't complete. The PCH has many different interfaces
on it, but chances are, you're not transferring stuff
between two source disk drives and two destination
disk drives. And somehow leading to oversubscription
of the bandwidth.

*******

As for this:

16 GB Intel Optane Memory Accelerator

Find a review.

Intel has been "backing this pony" for a long time.

What should happen, is your boot goes faster, and
maybe that's about it. It might have value, but
find a review. When I build systems for myself,
I ignore stuff like this.

Paul