Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 - Cooling and Misc

[OniExpress]

Howdy howdy. I'm planning on some upgrades for my current Phenom II X6 1100T (I'm not looking to upgrade the CPU at this time) system, as I'm really not pleased with the original motherboard (low number of PCI x16, no sata 6gb/s, etc) and am currently looking at the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 as a replacement option.

I've seen the reivews showing that this isn't the absolute fastest board I could pick, but I'm having a hard time overlooking the x16, x16, x8, x8, x4, x4 setup as it leaves me plenty of headroom after 2-4 video cards and raid card(s). I wouldn't mind an option with 16/16/16/16, or something with 8 ram slots for that matter, but them's the breaks.

I'm looking at combining this CPU block and this North/South block, as well as graphics/ram block; possibly with one or more of the 800-watt peltiers that I have sitting around. I've rarely done watercooling, so any further parts suggestions would be appreciated.

I'm also curious if anyone can verify my one way or the other what if any bandwidth is shared between the six PCI slots, that that's going to effect my choices for cards.

I'm sure I've got more topics, but running skint on time right now, so I'll be back later in the day.

 

[M249SAW]

No video card will be held back by a PCI-E 2.0 x8 slot so you have nothing to worry about if you think that it will hinder your performance.