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Just realized using the 3rd & 5th slot is going to be the same space issue as the 1st & 3rd.
I will try a bridge and see if it will work using the confugurations above. It seems skipping the 3rd lane makes it crash for me.
The performance loss is negligible on 16x vs 8x, loss of 1-3 %.
Were you able to get this setup working? I actually cant fit my cards, 290 vapor-x's, to fit on the two 16x slots, ie 1st & 3rd. The card is 1&1/2 lanes wide... I am running the same Mobo as you and can't seem to get my two 290...