PCIe x8 NIC in PCIe x16 slot

x16 slot exclusively uses those 16 lanes and doesn't share them Each slot takes up exactly the number of lanes listed, so x2 and x1 slots

your i5-3470 works on PCIe natively, Optiplex 7010 has only one slot bound to CPU PCIe, others are linked via chipset

pcie nvme slot 2 SSD, Support PCIe x4 x8 x16 Slot USB Type C ·

pcie x32 slot 2 Use larger SSDs, and manually partition them to do double-duty as SLOG and a small separate pool You'll get the separate pool you want, but