Hey all, I'm throwing myself on the collective wisdom of the forums.
I'm building a new system, either i5 or i7 and looking at an SLI setup, either immediately or in the future when I need a performance boost. I'm looking at mATX boards because the only feature differences between them and the full ATX versions are the number of SATA and USB3 headers, neither of which are an issue for me. So, I'd rather build a smaller box.
Which brings me to my problem. I quite like the look of the Gigabyte GA-Z77MX-D3H board. Has all the features I want, good reviews and such. And one nice feature is that it has the PCIe x16 slots laid out a little differently. Most boards have them as slots 1 and 3, which means that with all the graphics cards being double height these days the card in slot 1 uses the slot 1 and 2 expansion brackets and the second card uses the slot 3 and 4 expansion brackets, covering up the other two PCI slots and leaving little or no airflow between the cards.
However, the GA-Z77MX-D3H has the x16 slots in the first and fourth position, so card one uses slots 1 and 2, slot 3 is left free for either use or as airflow and then the second card uses slot 4 and hangs down over where the fifth slot would be.
The problem is that mATX cases don't generally have a fifth expansion card bracket in the back. They stop at four. So the card has nowhere to exit the case.
Is this actually going to be a problem or am I missing something obvious? Does anyone know of mATX cases that would allow for this setup?
I like the look of this board. I like the added airflow between the two cards and the possibility of an open pci slot, even with a SLI setup. But if I need to look at other options, that's what I'll have to do.
As a general note, all of Gigabyte's z77 mATX boards have the same odd PCIe layout and they all advertise as being SLI/crossfire ready, so I can't be the first to run into this, right?
I'm building a new system, either i5 or i7 and looking at an SLI setup, either immediately or in the future when I need a performance boost. I'm looking at mATX boards because the only feature differences between them and the full ATX versions are the number of SATA and USB3 headers, neither of which are an issue for me. So, I'd rather build a smaller box.
Which brings me to my problem. I quite like the look of the Gigabyte GA-Z77MX-D3H board. Has all the features I want, good reviews and such. And one nice feature is that it has the PCIe x16 slots laid out a little differently. Most boards have them as slots 1 and 3, which means that with all the graphics cards being double height these days the card in slot 1 uses the slot 1 and 2 expansion brackets and the second card uses the slot 3 and 4 expansion brackets, covering up the other two PCI slots and leaving little or no airflow between the cards.
However, the GA-Z77MX-D3H has the x16 slots in the first and fourth position, so card one uses slots 1 and 2, slot 3 is left free for either use or as airflow and then the second card uses slot 4 and hangs down over where the fifth slot would be.
The problem is that mATX cases don't generally have a fifth expansion card bracket in the back. They stop at four. So the card has nowhere to exit the case.
Is this actually going to be a problem or am I missing something obvious? Does anyone know of mATX cases that would allow for this setup?
I like the look of this board. I like the added airflow between the two cards and the possibility of an open pci slot, even with a SLI setup. But if I need to look at other options, that's what I'll have to do.
As a general note, all of Gigabyte's z77 mATX boards have the same odd PCIe layout and they all advertise as being SLI/crossfire ready, so I can't be the first to run into this, right?
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