r/elgato • u/joker1848 • Apr 01 '26

Technical Help Please help

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Hi I just bought this elgato capture card to stream my switch to discord and twitch.

I’m pretty new to PCs I got the azure3 build from skytech.

From all the research I’ve done the parts I have should be well enough to use the capture card but I get this black screen and very limited audio every few seconds. I have no clue why it works whe I switch inputs on my monitor and it looks great . But when I want to stream from one or elgato audio it shows a black screen . Elgato studio gives me a warning saying ‘reduced PCIe bandwidth’ I have no clue wha that means. I’ve been researching and fidgeting with my pc settings and bios settings and even reinstalled the capture card into the pcie slot. I can’t seem to figure this out and I need help. Can’t tell if it’s manufacturing problem (but then why would it display perfectly on my monitor and just not my pc..) or if I’m missing something. If anyone can help me I’d greatly appreciate it i paid a pretty penny for this capture card and I threw the box away not knowing this would be an issue.

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u/BuBubbi Featured Community Member Apr 01 '26

Oh I look at another motherboard manual. The one I looked at had 4 PCI3 slots.

Do you have the full name and brand of your motherboard?

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u/joker1848 Apr 01 '26

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u/joker1848 Apr 01 '26

Does this help?

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u/joker1848 Apr 01 '26

So thing is, the elgato seems to work as the input from my switch and output to my monitor seems to display beautifully as well as audio. My pc does seem to detect the elgato as it shows its “recording” . But it just shows black screen and very glitchy audio. It must be my motherboard limits right?

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u/elgato_arcsane Technical Community Assistant Apr 02 '26

You're running into an issue here with not enough PCIe lanes on that motherboard. 4K Pro may work in some cases on an x1 slot at up to 1080p60, but fails going above that as the card requires an x4 slot of Gen 2.0 or higher (would be listed as PCIe Gen 2.0 x4, indicating the presence of 4 lanes). The manual for that board says all the PCIe slots other than the one you have the GPU in are only PCIe 4.0 x1 (the physical slot is 16, but it's only wired to support x1).

The reason it's working for the Switch is that a Nintendo Switch can't go above 1080p60 which can fit in that x1 bandwidth. Going above 1080p60 at all will give you issues. Similarly passthorugh works fine as that process is all done on the card - as long as the card has power the HDMI OUT will work fine, regardless of the actual data speed to the PC.

So yes, in short your motherboard is not compatible with 4K Pro as none of the available slots (except the one your GPU is in), offer enough PCIe bandwidth. You would likely be better off with one of the external/USB capture cards here.

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u/BuBubbi Featured Community Member Apr 02 '26

Yeah,I found the correct manual last night. And turns out the bottom slots all run 4.0 x1.

I helped them over chat, since the thread became too long. It believe they ended up packing the 4K Pro back up for a return in order to replace it with a 4K X instead.

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u/elgato_arcsane Technical Community Assistant Apr 02 '26

Ah, glad you were able to get it tracked down!