Will it fit?

B

belmicah

Gawd
Joined
Oct 10, 2005
Messages
853
I have a Gigabyte Z68MA D2H B3 motherboard, and I will be getting an AMD 7970. I was wondering if I will have room to put in a Xonar Essence STX PCIE x1 sound card next to the graphics card, or will it not fit due to the graphics card being dual-slot?
 
He certainly gave a fast answer but it's not as clear as I'd like. OP, with your 7970 in slot 1, obviously you can't use slot 1 and 2. You can put the sound card in either slots 3 or 4. I suggest slot 4 because putting expansion cards further away from a GPU means it will hurt airflow less.

Ideally, this is what I suggest: put the GPU in slot 3 and the sound card in slot 2. Slot 3 has x8 bandwidth which should be plenty, then with the sound card slot 2 it will not affect your GPU's airflow at all.

Source for PCIe x8 info: http://www.techpowerup.com/157253/P...mance-Incentive-for-Radeon-HD-7970-Tests.html
 
Thanks XacTactx, very good response. I was also considering putting the GPU in slot 1 and just putting the sound card all the way down in slot 4 as well.

Edit: What about future SLI with 2 dual-slot GPU's and a sound card?
 
Your motherboard is not ideal for that setup. If you did that you would be putting the GPUs in slots 1 and 4, with the sound card in slot 3. Slot 4 only has x4 bandwidth. You might lost about 10-15% performance compared to using x8 or x16 slots. The top card in slot 1 will also run a good deal hotter because of the heat coming from the bottom card's fan and PCB.

If you like sound of a jet engine and the heat of a nuclear reactor you will not have any issues with this. ;) :p :D
 
I lied, I was thinking of a different board. Crossfire or sli, I don't that will be possible. One card will fit fine in the second slot though.
 
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