Hi, newbie here and newbie to full on PC build. I have an "MSI Z170A Mpower Gaming Titanium" board with 3 PCI-E slots and want to fit 2 x GTX 1080 cards, with a Nvidia SLI HS Bridge. Question - which two slots of the 3 should i use ? One combination apparently gives x16 / x4, while the other options gives x8 / x8... Really not sure if one setup would be better than the other, except for maybe a bit more airflow between the cards if spaced in slots 1 & 3 !! Any help appreciated, learning like a sponge right now ! Thanks all
For that board you will need to use slots PCI_E2 & PCI_E4 for an x8 x8 configuration because SLI will not work at x4. For that spacing you will want to use one of the two bridges: EVGA: 0 SLOT Nvidia: 2 SLOT I know it's weird, there is no standardization with spacing measurements yet. Currently EVGA measures by the gap/space between double slot cards and Nvidia measures by the length of the bridge. Btw - with that stacked spacing you will see some higher thermals on the top card. In stacked setups like that, good case ventilation is even more important than normal. And yeah, nice build!
Up and Running Thanks guys for the quick replies. x8 / x8 it is. As it happens that's also the only realistic solution for Dual boards on the Z170A MPower Gaming board Ti. If the 2nd card was dropped to the 3rd PCI-E slot, it would block access to all the bottom row USB, SATA, HD Audio etc connections on the Motherboard.. Lit it up tonight with no apparent problems. Plenty of optimization work left I'm sure, but so far Alive is good.. Primary gaming will be Racing games, been a while for me, need for speed last game I played ! Hope to play either on Multi screen eyefinity setup (3 x Asus 26"), or ideally on Samsung 4K 65" Smart TV ??? Maybe a dumb idea - still learning. Thanks all again. Will attach Pic when I work out how to on this Forum (URL ??) - will tidy up wiring later !!
