Any thoughts on using the top and bottom PCIe on an Asus for SLI?

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce' started by boe, May 20, 2013.

  1. boe

    boe Guest

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    Hello,

    I just tried out SLI for the first time and the speed was great before my old cards over heated. I like the idea of SLI as I can use them to improve my speed without buying a new video card every time I upgrade and when that becomes too slow I can put them in my second PC.

    The issue for me is I like REALLY quiet PCs. The stock coolers do a pretty good job even with the cards up against each other but I see a lot of people try to leave at least 1 space between the cards. The problem for that with me is I use a sound card AND a SAS controller so my slot arrangement for keeping the cards cool is limited.

    I was thinking of building a new PC and putting one card at the very top and one at the very bottom in an extended case (HAF X) Often they recommend using PCIe slot 1 and slot 2 for SLI. Not sure if that is an old concern or still current.
    [​IMG]
     
  2. clawhamer

    clawhamer Ancient Guru

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    Shouldn’t be an issue, if that’s the board you’re going to be using.

    Your cards are dual slot right.

    "The big daddy is the Maximus VI Extreme. The board allows for 3-way and 4-way multi-GPU setups and has a PCI-Express 3.0 x48 bridge chip for four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots. Two of them are electrically x16 wired, while all four can do x8. Connectivity include two gigabit Ethernet interfaces, ten SATA 6 Gb/s ports, eight USB 3.0."

    www.guru3d.com/asus_z87
     
  3. boe

    boe Guest

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    Thanks. I hope you are right.

    Yes, that is the motherboard I'll probably get - that or a gigabyte with as many x16 slots( if they make a motherboard like that without an onboard fan).

    The video cards will definitely be 2 slot only (bought a 3 slot one which eliminates my options for SLI currently without giving up something else).

    I'm curious fi the VI Extreme will support large arrays. My current array is 9TB but will probably increase as I'm running low on space.

    What does "Two of them are electrically x16 wired, while all four can do x8" if there are 4 or 5 x16 slots I'm not sure what this means? Is this for video cards that don't use the molex for power?
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2013
  4. boe

    boe Guest

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    After batting around a lot of ideas and learning many things about motherboards, I've finally decided on what would be best for me.

    From what I've read on other sites, I should be OK with 8x PCIe 3.0 SLI config. I wish there were more XL-ATX motherboards. I think I'll limp along with a single titan when a 2 slot air cooled solution becomes available such as a directcu or windforce, wait for a newer 2011 XL-ATX motherboard to come along and get an x99 motherboard and then get my second video card.

    Thanks everyone for your help.
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2013

  5. Stompya

    Stompya Member

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    That is the board I am looking at getting. My 2 cards dont have any space between on my current mobo. Planning to use top and bottom with sound in between.
     

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