3-way SLI, room for more?

ronster667 said:
it doesnt look like it, if your useing a big card like the 260 280 8800 or 9800 but if your useing a small card it will fit
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So what your saying is that the mother has the capability, just not enough space, right?

I mean it has enough slots, just the cards would take up too much room rendering the other slot(s) useless.
 
thats a big card, it only takes up one slot but since the heatsink and fan on it bulge out so much it takes up the slot next to it also, thats prolly why they dont put the 3 pci 16 slots right next to each other couldnt fit all three cards

but yeah, if you have all three of them cards in sli, then they will be basically touching each other
 
Nums said:
They are..all the graphics cards would be single slot, I'm specifically talking about the GTX 260
Click to expand...

Yeah, the gtx260 takes up a single slot but they have dual slot coolers, and on that motherboard you would end up with all slots filled. Also, from what i understand you would be better off going straight SLI without the tri because the scaling is so small and use that extra room for your sound card.
 
I Think unless youve got really good speakers and you use them a lot. then the onboard sound will be good enough. it has more than enough connections :)
 
Two issues...

...one, if it fits, it's going to be a REALLY tight fit. If you really want to try this, my suggestion would be to buy two GFX cards first and then check the fit on different slots between them. Then if it looks like you have the space, you can always get the sound card, check fit again, and go for the third GFX card.

...two, if it fits, good luck keeping those babies cool. My 8800GTS 512 ran just fine at stock fan speeds when there was just one of them in there. When I went SLI, I had to jack the fan speed up to 70-75% to keep them from crashing out because one card was basically sucking hot air off the @ss of the other. Adding a fan to move air around in the space between them didn't work. Although those are double-slot cards, single-slot cards will, in all likelihood, face the same problem.

If it were me, I would go 2-way SLI with a sound card. Onboard sound, although much better than it ever has been before, is still inferior to a good quality sound card. But SRCobra is right, this is only true if you have at least semi-decent speakers or headphones. Give the onboard a shot. I personally hate the RealTek audio most mobos use (including EVGA boards), but you might not.

In the end, I gave up trying to air cool my babies, and switched over to water.
 
unless you want to go the watercooling route, i know that the dangerden tieton waterblocks can turn a graphics card into single slot, you can also buy a single slot bracket
 
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