Which slot for sound card? (MSI P67A-GD55)

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Impulse

[H]F Junkie
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Apr 5, 2001
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mobo: http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P67A-GD55.html#/?div=Basic

I've never done SLI or CF until now, and it's been at least half a dozen years since I had any cards in my system besides sound/video... Although I remember jamming a NIC, a DVD decoder card, a SCSI card, a sound card, a TNT or an early GeForce, and God knows what else in some of my earliest systems; course back then video cards weren't the monsters they are today...

Anyway, I'm building my Sandy Bridge setup and I'm not sure whether I'm better off putting the X-Fi sound card on the top-most slot, or on the 4th slot down... Only other cards are my two 6950's. Either way it's sitting behind a GPU, it might obstruct the first GPU's airflow on the 4th slot but the 6950's are so long I doubt it'd be an issue. Still, I'm sure it'd breathe better w/two full slots in between, although there's gonna be a side panel fan sucking air in right on top of them anyway.

Is there anything else to take into consideration? Just flipped thru the manual to see if there was anything to take into account as far as PCI-E lanes but it doesn't say.
 
i say usually top slot - improved airflow/temps for the videocard, though not so much a problem with ref 6950 coolers like you mentioned. though if you had a ridiculously oversized cpu cooler (which you don't), the top slot might be a problem. my 9900 max almost prevents me from using the first slot. got maybe 4-5mm of space left in btw.
 
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Top slot would probably be best for airflow, but you can put it in whatever x1 slot you'd like.

The x1 slots are provided by the chipset so they won't cut into the PCIE lanes that come from the cpu.
 
Hmm, guess I'll do top slot then... Works out the best for cable management anyway. Still working that out... ;) Wish it had two USB 2.0 headers, that's the one thing I've found that MSI kinda skimped on, they did one USB 2.0 header and one USB 3.0 header, other mobos have multiple USB 2.0 headers. OTOH the header supports a higher-voltage mode for iPad charging and such, not that I'll really use that.
 
More USB is never a bad thing ;) Easily fixed with a hub, though.

If it will fit in the top slot I'd use that as most likely anything else will fit in the other.
 
Yeah, I use a hub for most of my stuff... I like having two USB 2.0 headers tho so I can plug in the two USB ports on my case plus a 3.5" bay multi-card reader (w/built in-USB hub). I'll probably just leave the two case ports unplugged, the reader has three ports after all... It's pretty neat actually, has an e-SATA port and USB 3.0 port as well (that one requires going out the back of the case tho since I guess they made it before Intel defined the USB 3.0 header spec).
 
in the pci\isa years some slots were sheared with other things,so that's why you had to think about that kind of thing.

with pci-e i don't.
any slot will do seeing as the pci-e slot in question should have dedicated bandwidth right to the chipset,this wasn't all ways the case in years gone by.
 
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