SLI / XFire Breathing Room

D

darkdub

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 22, 2011
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102
What motherboards exist for the 1366 socket that:

1) Have at least 3 x PCI-e x16 slots at x16, x8, x8 or better configuration, AND
2) Have two slots of spacing between each PCI-e slot rather than 1?

The only boards I've found (so far) that do this are by ASRock. Here's one on newegg:

ASRock X58 Extreme 6
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157213

Is this board good for stability and moderate overclocking? Not trying to set any records. How about other boards that have this extra slot for cooling?
 
There are a lot of X58 boards out there that will give you that type of configuration. There are more, but this is the list I came up with real quick in my head.
  • ASUS Rampage III Extreme
  • ASUS Rampage III Formula
  • ASUS Rampage III Black Edition
  • ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution
  • ASUS P6T7 WS Supercomputer
  • ASUS Sabertooth X58
  • EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified (All three versions will do what you ask.)
  • EVGA X58 4X SLI Classified
  • EVGA SR-2
  • Gigabyte X58A-UD9
  • Gigabyte G1 Assassin
 
Dan_D said:
There are a lot of X58 boards out there that will give you that type of configuration. There are more, but this is the list I came up with real quick in my head.
  • ASUS Rampage III Extreme
  • ASUS Rampage III Formula
  • ASUS Rampage III Black Edition
  • ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution
  • ASUS P6T7 WS Supercomputer
  • ASUS Sabertooth X58
  • EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified (All three versions will do what you ask.)
  • EVGA X58 4X SLI Classified
  • EVGA SR-2
  • Gigabyte X58A-UD9
  • Gigabyte G1 Assassin
Click to expand...

I spot checked the first few on the list... they work with one of my two requirements, but not both. The key here is breathing room -- I want an extra slot between the cards with at least three cards, if not four. The SR2 you mention would fit the bill for 3 or 4 cards, but I'm too cheap to buy the xeons, and from what I read previously when the board was first released, I don't believe you can run a non-xeon processor even if you just use one chip.
 
darkdub said:
I spot checked the first few on the list... they work with one of my two requirements, but not both. The key here is breathing room -- I want an extra slot between the cards with at least three cards, if not four. The SR2 you mention would fit the bill for 3 or 4 cards, but I'm too cheap to buy the xeons, and from what I read previously when the board was first released, I don't believe you can run a non-xeon processor even if you just use one chip.
Click to expand...

Going cheap doesn't make sense for a build like this. Though I do understand your desire to stick with consumer grade Core i7's or uni-processor Xeons. You have to spend a fortune to get a decent pair of Xeons. At a bare minimum though, you will need an expensive motherboard and an expensive (relatively speaking) case to handle the real estate needed by that many cards. Also I must have misunderstood as I didn't know you needed room for three cards. Really there aren't many choices for that and meeting your criteria for "breathing room" between all three cards. Pretty much everything you'll want aside from maybe the P6T7 WS Supercomputer is going to be XL-ATX. You'll need a case which will accept those boards and either have more slots than the boards expansion area or will allow the card to hang off the last slot. The Super Computer won't require as big a case necessarily but the last video card may need to hang off the edge of the PCB. Then you run into the problem of making sure your SLI bridges fit the setup. Otherwise you've got to get three long flexible bridges and go that way. The only boards I know of that will work for you are listed below:
  • ASUS P6T7 WS Super Computer
  • EVGA X58 4X SLI Classified
  • EVGA SR-2
  • Gigabyte X58A-UD9
Now I've run 3-Way SLI more times than most. I can tell you that you do not need that space for "breathing room" provided you've got two things happening.

1.) Ambient room temperature which does not exceed about 78F degrees. (Hard to do in the actual room where the monster machine resides.)
2.) Use fan speed controls from MSI Afterburner, NVIDIA control panel or other to keep fan speeds high enough to cope with higher temperatures.

And even then, you may still need to increase fan speeds anyway depending on the case you've chosen and a few other factors. Honestly this is all a pain in the ass but it's cheaper than the alternative. And believe me there is an alternative. With 3 8800GTX's I found it was simply easiest (although expensive) to just water cool the damn things. That was it problem solved. If you really want three cards you have to choose where you shell out your cash. Either you shell it out for water cooling gear, or you shell out for a case and a more expensive motherboard. You water cool and you can use virtually any case and any of the motherboards I listed above and more.
 
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While it might not be technically "needed" to have that one-slot gap between the cards, it does make a noticeable difference in temperatures, and therefore fan speed, at a given workload (provided one is using air cooling). For instance, I keep the room where my desktop machines are located at approximately 74°F. When there is a one-slot gap between crossfire'd 6970s running at 99% utilization, the top two cards see about a 10°F drop in temperature and consequently a significant drop in noise.

I've seen people state that the Radeon 69XX line can safely run in the upper 90's to lower 100's, but I prefer to stay around the 50's / 60's if possible.

If 1366 were the new socket on the block, I wouldn't think twice about dropping 4-500 on a mobo to support 3x or 4x SLI / xFire. As it stands, with socket 1155 already prevalent and 2011 just around the corner, I hesitate to spend any more than necessary. That said, I've been considering a Koolance unit for some time now... The 3K3U unit could easily cool 4 cards and a processor but at over $1K USD....

Thanks for the insight though. Liquid cooling is probably the best long-term solution, and I'll probably look into doing that once I build a socket 2011 box. For now though I think I'll keep looking into that ASRock board. As long as it's stable, it should do what I want for a relatively low price and hold me over until socket 2011.
 
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Forgot to update this for completeness... I upgraded to the ASRock board mentioned above, which is still the only board which is both fairly inexpensive and has two slots between each high-speed PCI-E 16x slot rather than 1.

I've got an i7 960 OC'd to 4GHz, 24 hours stable. The reviews say that ASRock boards don't overclock as well as many of the others, and while that may be true, it's working just fine for my purposes.

The extra spacing makes a considerable difference for air-cooled cards. While before the top-two cards were always considerably hotter under load (approximately 10+ degrees C), now they're much closer. The three cards stay within 2 degrees of each other under load, and don't require the fans to be as loud.

Highly recommended for the budget-performance build. =)
 
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