chemist_slime, were you able to get the SuperMicro RSC-R2UT-2E8R to work with the AsRock board?
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Im wondering whether if 2 1080s in SLI can be modded to 1 slot cards and watercooled.
But not sure where to fit the rads...
Here's a dump of my buildlog so far Project Chrome Leopard <10L CFX Nanos
Hi folks, what a wonderful thread this is. Just registered to ask a few questions:
1) I have read the entire thread but I'm still a bit confused about which splitters work. Is it true that the only splitter that is confirmed to work for PCIe Gen 3 devices is the Ameri-rack one?
2) I have the ASRock X99 ITX motherboard. The beta BIOSs have disappeared from the ASRock site. Does this mean that support for bifurcation has gone into the stable BIOS? I don't have a CPU yet so I can't look for myself.
3) Is the Ameri-rack splitter entirely passive? As in no components on it, just traces? If so, would it be possible to make up my own by buying 2 PCIe x16 sockets and a PCIe x16 edge connector and wiring them all up carefully by hand? It's possible to buy x16 PCIe ribbon cables which have a socket on one end and an edge connector on the other. If I buy two I could reuse the ends and rewire the middle part...
4) If it's possible to wire one up, what is the wiring diagram? There is an image in this thread for the pin-out for a super micro splitter. Can I just wire that up and expect it to work?
5) If it's not possible to make my own and I have to get the Ameri-rack one, what length of ribbon should I get to achieve a configuration where the two slots are in exactly the same position as a dual slot GPU would be without the splitter but raised vertically upwards to make space for the splitter? 3cm or 5cm? How much extra height would the splitter add in this configuration?
If you are wondering what I'm up to, I'm doing an insane Mac Classic beige mod. Hopefully with TECs. I am not allowed to post a link to it until I have 3 posts here but if you search for Mac Classic Forever on overclock.net you will find it.
Thanks for your help!
Schmov17 Yes, it worked with the new bios that support bifurcation.
Hi folks, what a wonderful thread this is. Just registered to ask a few questions:
1) I have read the entire thread but I'm still a bit confused about which splitters work. Is it true that the only splitter that is confirmed to work for PCIe Gen 3 devices is the Ameri-rack one?
2) I have the ASRock X99 ITX motherboard. The beta BIOSs have disappeared from the ASRock site. Does this mean that support for bifurcation has gone into the stable BIOS? I don't have a CPU yet so I can't look for myself.
3) Is the Ameri-rack splitter entirely passive? As in no components on it, just traces? If so, would it be possible to make up my own by buying 2 PCIe x16 sockets and a PCIe x16 edge connector and wiring them all up carefully by hand? It's possible to buy x16 PCIe ribbon cables which have a socket on one end and an edge connector on the other. If I buy two I could reuse the ends and rewire the middle part...
4) If it's possible to wire one up, what is the wiring diagram? There is an image in this thread for the pin-out for a super micro splitter. Can I just wire that up and expect it to work?
5) If it's not possible to make my own and I have to get the Ameri-rack one, what length of ribbon should I get to achieve a configuration where the two slots are in exactly the same position as a dual slot GPU would be without the splitter but raised vertically upwards to make space for the splitter? 3cm or 5cm? How much extra height would the splitter add in this configuration?
If you are wondering what I'm up to, I'm doing an insane Mac Classic beige mod. Hopefully with TECs. I am not allowed to post a link to it until I have 3 posts here but if you search for Mac Classic Forever on overclock.net you will find it.
Thanks for your help!
But it seems its just a GEN2 riser?
1. No. Supermicro is selling a few with Gen 3 too (RSC-G2FR-A66 and RSC-R2UG-A2E16-A)
2. No just use the new beta ones. I had problems with the actual one but there is also one older beta.
3. Yes the Ameri-rack seems to be passive. And the idea of making one by yourself is interesting... try it and tell us!
4. dont know this one
5. Depends on your configuration but dual slot should be 5cm. Extra high should be around 15mm with spacer (that the contacts at the bottom doesnt touch the case)
BTW Thanks chemist_slime for figuring out how it works! I use this to make a watercooled build with ITX and two 980ti. (BTW there is also a solution to use the cards without a riser, tested it and works like a charm with no loss of performance. But need a few persons to test the instructions)
If you are planning on buying from Ameri-rack folks, don't. I just finished talking to their sales guys and they said that they just sell to system integrators now, which is a bummer since i was planning on buying a couple from them.
But it seems its just a GEN2 riser?
1. No. Supermicro is selling a few with Gen 3 too (RSC-G2FR-A66 and RSC-R2UG-A2E16-A)
2. No just use the new beta ones. I had problems with the actual one but there is also one older beta.
3. Yes the Ameri-rack seems to be passive. And the idea of making one by yourself is interesting... try it and tell us!
4. dont know this one
5. Depends on your configuration but dual slot should be 5cm. Extra high should be around 15mm with spacer (that the contacts at the bottom doesnt touch the case)
BTW Thanks chemist_slime for figuring out how it works! I use this to make a watercooled build with ITX and two 980ti. (BTW there is also a solution to use the cards without a riser, tested it and works like a charm with no loss of performance. But need a few persons to test the instructions)
What exactly is this riser-less solution you speak of?
Hmm. I think this might have been my only option...
...since the supermicro ones won't fit.
Is there any other solution which will get me two cards into the space of a dual slot card with a bit of extra height?
ah sorry I meant "bridge"... to much risers
the Ameri-rack isnt for dual slot cards... its for single slot.
Yes, I want two single slot cards in the space of one dual slot card but they will have to be a bit higher up to fit the riser between the bottom of the cards and the motherboard. I think the Ameri-rack riser can do this if you bend the ribbon cable round. I'm looking for any solution like that which I can actually purchase.
heb1001 are you adding two graphics cards or something else? Didn't read that part on OC yet.
2 GPUs is the current plan but I guess in the future I might want 1 and something else perhaps.
Is there a chip to duplicate the reference clock signal on the ameri-rack splitter?
I could probably get a few made if I could work out the wiring diagram. I visited the Shanghai electronics mall last weekend and found a few people offering PCB manufacturing. The mall is incredible. 5 football pitch sized floors full of stalls about the size of a single bedroom selling everything you could possibly imagine.
You could use a PLX splitter for that I guess.Too bad this can't be used on older chipsets. Imagine the quadSLI powerhouse you can make of any mATX setup...
It uses this chip. It's the only one on the splitter.
You could use a PLX splitter for that I guess.
It's a "3.3V, 100MHz Differential HCSL Clock Buffer". Data sheet is here:
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Thanks.
heb1001 If you end up getting one of these made, can I buy one or two off you?
Ameri-rack didn't answer my email. I'm going to phone them. If they won't sell me one I may try to get some made. It looks borderline doable with the skills I have if I get lucky with the signal integrity. If it doesn't work first time though I will never be able to find out why as I don't have access to test equipment that would work at that speed. The last time I did something like this the bus was ISA and I was wire wrapping the wires individually. If I'm successful though it would be good to make them available to individuals somehow. So the answer is yes, I guess, but don't hold your breath. It may never happen.
Is the PI6C20400 wired up to the SMBUS? Are pins 13 and 14 of the PI6C20400 (counting anticlockwise from the indent in the package looking from the top of the chip) connected to pins 5 and 6 of side B (the component side) of the PCIe fingers? EDIT: nevermind, I can try it both ways and see which works.
I wonder if those little coax cables which are used for connecting WiFi antennas would work for the PCIe lane differential signals. It might be possible to do a single PCB with coax sockets that can be stacked to create a 2, 3 or 4 way splitter depending on how the coax cables were connected. The clock buffer supports 4 clock outputs so that would be enough.
EDIT: this twin axial cable looks like the right stuff: http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/673519O/3mtm-twin-axial-cable-sl8800-series.pdf&fn=Twin Ax Sales Sheet.pdf
At the start of this thread I was also looking into this, making a PCB that takes the 100MHz reference clock and splits it into 2 isn't that big of a project. Combine that with a working flexible riser and you can have a simple splitter and be even more flexible, you can have different lengths easily.
Yes, I recall! I also signed up at SFF form, didn't know you were a mod there! I'll be backing Cerebreus once it's available as well!
Unfortunately I don't have the knowledge to answer your technical questions but would more photos help? are there specific ones that you'd like for me to take?
Not sure if anyone mentioned this yet, but the Gigabyte GA-Z170N-WiFi got 8x/8x bifurication on the new rev2.0 models.
I think you are mistaken there, I'm neither a Mod nor the creator of Cerberus
Not sure if anyone mentioned this yet, but the Gigabyte GA-Z170N-WiFi got 8x/8x bifurication on the new rev2.0 models.
It's a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, PCI-e 2.0 MB with 2x x16 & 2x x8 slots, ...Samsung 950 Pro NVMe via a PCI-e M.2 adapter card....This is all great except the M.2 drives are actually capable of much more than that on a PCIe 3.0 bus.
... But also from what I read above, a PLX bridged riser should work as well (with M.2 -> PCIe x4 adapters plugged in to it). If the on-card M.2 slots are x4 3.0, and the card itself is x16, plugged in to an x16 2.0 slot, there should be enough bandwidth for the M.2 cards to communicate at full speed to the bridge chip, and in turn for the bridge chip to communicate with the motherboard.
However this hinges on a critical assumption -- that the bridge chip doesn't just act as a dumb lane switch, routing the 4 lanes from the M.2 devices directly to the CPU via four 2.0 lanes, but smartly buffers and distributes the actual data among all available lanes between it and the motherboard. So the riser would have to take x8 3.0 lanes on one side and use all x16 2.0 lanes on the other. Is this a pipe dream?
Hi team, I was inspired by chemist_slime's success to roll my own mITX dual R9 Nano machine. I mostly do engineering simulation and rendering, not gaming, but this sounded like a cool way to build a cheap-ish parallel processing powerhouse in a really small enclosure. So I don't need Crossfire per se, but it would be fun to have as a bonus. I do want to at least be able to use one card for graphics and one for data, though- a poor man's Mac Pro.
I have an Asrock Fatality mITX board (with bifurcation BIOS support enabled), a Supermicro RSC-R2UT-2E8R passive bifurcation riser, and an EZDIY x16 passive riser cable to reach the second Nano around the first. Power supply is a Corsair CX650M 650W supply, so I should have plenty of juice.
However, I have a problem. After removing the AMD drivers, updating the Intel onboard graphics driver, and reinstalling the AMD drivers, I can run the system on onboard graphics stably and have both cards show up in the display adapters:
View attachment 8644
I can also run a single card at a time driving the display, so I know there's nothing wrong with either card (or the PCIE riser or splitter).
However, when I try to drive the display from one card with both cards plugged in, my system is unstable. Sometimes it will work in intermittent bursts, sometimes it will boot but then show graphical corruption then BSOD, and most of the time it won't boot at all.
During one period of relative stability, I was able to see that the AMD driver is seeing both cards:
View attachment 8645
so there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the PCIE connection per se. It's only that the system is unstable with both cards in and one card powering the display - everything else works.
The only thing I've been able to think of is that maybe the two Nanos are drawing too much power through the PCIE slot, overloading the slot and causing the instability and shutdowns. I wouldn't think this would be a problem - they aren't power-hungry cards, and they have separate 8-pin connectors. So before I go by a powered riser to try to solve the issue, I wanted to see what people think is the problem.
What do you think could be wrong here? Has anyone else had similar problems? What did they do to solve them? Is it just the PCIE slot being overdrawn or is it some other issue I haven't yet found? Any ideas?
Hi team, I was inspired by chemist_slime's success to roll my own mITX dual R9 Nano machine. I mostly do engineering simulation and rendering, not gaming, but this sounded like a cool way to build a cheap-ish parallel processing powerhouse in a really small enclosure. So I don't need Crossfire per se, but it would be fun to have as a bonus. I do want to at least be able to use one card for graphics and one for data, though- a poor man's Mac Pro.
I have an Asrock Fatality mITX board (with bifurcation BIOS support enabled), a Supermicro RSC-R2UT-2E8R passive bifurcation riser, and an EZDIY x16 passive riser cable to reach the second Nano around the first. Power supply is a Corsair CX650M 650W supply, so I should have plenty of juice.
However, I have a problem. After removing the AMD drivers, updating the Intel onboard graphics driver, and reinstalling the AMD drivers, I can run the system on onboard graphics stably and have both cards show up in the display adapters:
View attachment 8644
I can also run a single card at a time driving the display, so I know there's nothing wrong with either card (or the PCIE riser or splitter).
However, when I try to drive the display from one card with both cards plugged in, my system is unstable. Sometimes it will work in intermittent bursts, sometimes it will boot but then show graphical corruption then BSOD, and most of the time it won't boot at all.
During one period of relative stability, I was able to see that the AMD driver is seeing both cards:
View attachment 8645
so there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the PCIE connection per se. It's only that the system is unstable with both cards in and one card powering the display - everything else works.
The only thing I've been able to think of is that maybe the two Nanos are drawing too much power through the PCIE slot, overloading the slot and causing the instability and shutdowns. I wouldn't think this would be a problem - they aren't power-hungry cards, and they have separate 8-pin connectors. So before I go by a powered riser to try to solve the issue, I wanted to see what people think is the problem.
What do you think could be wrong here? Has anyone else had similar problems? What did they do to solve them? Is it just the PCIE slot being overdrawn or is it some other issue I haven't yet found? Any ideas?