An information handling system may detect whether each one of a plurality of peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) slots is populated or unpopulated, and update a PCIe bus configuration map to indicate whether each of the PCIe slots is populated. The system may also allocate PCIe bus resources to each of the PCIe slots based on the PCIe bus configuration map, wherein the allocating of the PCIe bus resources includes prioritizing populated PCIe slots over unpopulated PCIe slots.