More PCIe slots? Motherboard recommendation for 3x SLI + additional boards.

C

Cronyx

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 24, 2005
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146
Hey guys, I'm building a new rig soon and I've run into a bit of a problem that surely must have been addressed somewhere, it can't be that I'm the only one running into this.

There's plenty of motherboards out now that support 3xSLI. In fact, it's becoming the norm. However, it seems that for any given board on which you'd run this configuration, all the PCI(e) slots get monopolized by the video cards, because of their thickness.

Which motherboard would you recommend for someone who wants to run 3xSLI, as well as one of those new spiffy PCIe 7.1 sound cards, and a NIC (I generally don't like integrated networking)? This means I'm going to need five slots at least, but I'll need all five to be accessible when running 3xSLI.

Thanks in advance.
 
EVGA 790i ultra, EVGA Classified, no slot for nic but there are two onboard Gig. It's the best you will do due to the limitation of the atx design standard..
 
NP, let me know how it works out. With triple sli 280 on my 790i Ultra and the CPU bottleneck ([email protected]), I don't know how long I can hold off buying it myself! Really no need for it right now since I game at 1920x1200 but I'm waiting for the right 30" display.
 
heh yeah, I've been wanting a 30" myself. Actually, I'd like three of them; hard to beat panoramic 7680x1600 :D

Course I'm not sure how to go about setting that up, but I've seen plenty of people doing it on youtube...
 
I'm a heavy FPS gamer.. COD4 (if punkbuster ever fixes their crap for Win7), COD - WAW, TF2. The issue is that there seems to be massive lag on the response time for these 30 inchers. My Gateway 24" with 3ms response is great,
 
Are you familiar with Maxishine? He's had a youtube channel for a while. I'm not sure what he does for a living, but he buys about three video cards a month, just to have the latest and greatest, and posts videos about it. He got a huge following when he was the first to upload a FRAPS video of Crysis being defeated by 3xSLI at over 60fps a long while back. Got his own website and forum now. Anyway, point being, he's got several 30" screens. They aren't the best for brightness or some other stats, but he focuses on the delay and in that regard, they're comparable to 24" screens.

Right now I'm running a Dell E248WFP. I love it a lot, having gone directly from an old CRT to this being my first LCD. Of course, it's addictive, now I'm pining over 30" :)
 
+1 for EVGA Classified. Very expensive board (~$450) but has enough spacing for 3 x SLI + 1 PhysX.
 
Forget the Classified -- the ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution has more PCIe slots than you could ever hope to fill. Cause... that's all it has. 16x physical slots. 7 of them. It's $300 at Dell right now, if it's still in stock. If not, $350 at Newegg.
 
silent-circuit said:
Forget the Classified -- the ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution has more PCIe slots than you could ever hope to fill. Cause... that's all it has. 16x physical slots. 7 of them. It's $300 at Dell right now, if it's still in stock. If not, $350 at Newegg.
Click to expand...

Well I looked at it over at newegg, I found some screen shots.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131358

It looks like, in that configuration, they'd still be blocked. Even the one at the bottom. The spacing is just too tight. What am I missing?

papas63 said:
BAMM! Try not to drool too much.
Click to expand...
Too late.

God damn... DO want.
 
Holy crap that's a lot of hardware :eek:

Makes me wonder though, is the ATX specification in need of a revision to accommodate more expansion slots?
 
ATX spec is pretty limited. If you are going to do it, you are going to need to go single slot cooler on at least one card. And that means WC. Now, you could get a small WC cooling kit and just cool one card and not cool your CPU or the other cards. Or you could go to the other extreme and get a fully decked 1K$+ koolance system. Doesn't sound like money is that big of an issue to you.
 
That's when you need to water cool.

Look at my buildlog over this weekend.

I'll have an Asus P6T6 WS Rev with four single slot water blocks on four GTX285s plus PCIe sound card plus space for a PCIe Raid controller or PCIe NIC.

I'm also getting an EVGA Classified but that has one slot less.

Water blocks are just one slot thick and you can easily change out the backplane to one slot. Easy to run the video cards back to back too. Some have run five high end video cards back to back.
 
What the last few posts have said - change out to single-slot watercooling. Even the P6T6 WS Rev with 6 physical x16 slots will still only hold 3 stock dual-slot video cards, maybe with an extra single-slot card if you put the third video card in the last slot hanging off the bottom.

If you switch to slim waterblocks, you can probably use just about any tri-SLI board out there.
 
So this kind of set up, where you run the cards back to back in directly adjacent slots using thin water blocks actually works with these new 2X cards? Because I was under the impression that the cards were so thick because there was technically two boards inside of them, sandwiching a heatsink. How does replacing the heatsink with a water block free up more room on the overall width of a 2X card if the room you're freeing up is in the middle between them? Or am I not understanding how they work exactly? (I've never seen one in person yet, only pictures online.) Do the two boards in a 2X card actually get closer together when you do this, thus freeing up room in the next adjacent PCIe slot?
 
Cronyx said:
So this kind of set up, where you run the cards back to back in directly adjacent slots using thin water blocks actually works with these new 2X cards? Because I was under the impression that the cards were so thick because there was technically two boards inside of them, sandwiching a heatsink. How does replacing the heatsink with a water block free up more room on the overall width of a 2X card if the room you're freeing up is in the middle between them? Or am I not understanding how they work exactly? (I've never seen one in person yet, only pictures online.) Do the two boards in a 2X card actually get closer together when you do this, thus freeing up room in the next adjacent PCIe slot?
Click to expand...

In your OP, you said 3x SLI, which would indicate you would not be running a GTX295 as you said 3x SLI and there is only 1 SLI tab on a 295. All the other cards 260, 275, 280, 285, are all single boards. They are 2 slots wide because they need the extra room for more fin area and a larger fan to disapate the heat at a reasonable (reasonable to some) temperature delta.

Waterblocks transfer the heat to water which takes much much much less surface area and no fan so they can be much shorter in height.

260/280 waterblock from koolance
 
P6T6, the one thing about this board that was a deal killer for me? No 1394... so you mean I have to use up one of those PCIe slots to put in a 1394 card to import video from my HD camcorder? And this on a claimed WORKSTATION board? EPIC FAIL.

Asus better correct this on the P6T7.
 
9/10ths of gamers yes, 9/10ths of workstations users is way off the mark.

The video industry is firmly entrenched in using 1394. It will not be replaced by USB, and is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Trivia: The F-22 Raptor uses the IEEE 1394B interface for all electronics interconnections. Heeeey, why didn't they use USB for the F-22? I mean 1394 is a dead technology 'cus USB is so much better. :rolleyes:
 
Maybe that's why the government killed F22 production? :D For using inefficient firewire that is :D
 
Its important, it just not 550 bones + cost of 2x Nahalem Xeon's important to me. I am just disappointed in Asus calling the P6T6 a workstation motherboard since they apparently don't understand the market segment. Wouldn't be the first time though...
 
how do you get 3 way + physic on any of these boards unless you are using single slot cooling?
 
ND40oz said:
Classified allows you to, but you'll need an 8 slot case.
Click to expand...

but again, how do you it without single slot cards?

Not saying people don't SLI with single slot cards but most are dual slot which by looking at the pics of the classified at Newegg, there is no way it can work.

I do like that they added the pcie 1x slot there for sound cards and what not. thats the one thing I wish my p6t had.
 
Bigbacon said:
but again, how do you it without single slot cards?

Not saying people don't SLI with single slot cards but most are dual slot which by looking at the pics of the classified at Newegg, there is no way it can work.
Click to expand...

1st slot - PCIe 1x - sound card
2nd slot - 1st video card
3rd slot - covered by 1st card
4th slot - 2nd video card
5th slot - covered by 2nd card
6th slot - single slot GPU for physics
7th slot - 3rd video card
8th slot - coverd by 3rd video card

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11298&Itemid=37
 
i'm actually selling off one of my rigs, and plan to make the move to i7 within the next month.
I'm getting the proc this weekend, and am thinking about the board. I have 2 gtx 260's right now, with the option of adding a third (I have it, just need a psu). But i'm looking to get a board with support of i7 and hardware raid (Adaptec 3805),

Would the Evga Classified be my only choice here? I'm mainly interested in using the box for flat out gaming.
 
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