Will motherboard makers ever start designing for two slot coolers?

[kasakka]

So I recently got another GTX770 to run in SLI and to my dismay it also meant I had to get a new FireWire card, because the cooler went over the PCI slot and no PCI riser would fit in there. I managed to get around this by grabbing a cheap PCI-E FireWire card off eBay, but after that there is absolutely no more cards that can fit on my motherboard.

Seriously, will motherboard manufacturers ever address this? Most graphics cards sold today are two slot models yet even multi-GPU motherboards are still made for one slot cards. Pretty much the only thing that would be needed is grouping the graphics card slots together and leaving the PCI-E 4x and PCI slots after that on the motherboard.

 

[Spydermag68]

You would be in a world of hurt if you had to use motherboards from the '80s or '90s. You had to fit a video card, printer card, sound card, network card and another one for your mouse. Then you have to worry about the IRQ settings.

 

[coffeejunkee]

No, they won't. Most people prefer an empty slot between their graphics cards for breathing room so that's what most mobo's got. Manufacturers are not going to cater to the needs of the few people with some ancient expansion card.

Actually, most mobo's nowadays don't even have a pci slot at all.

 

[Lonyo]

Yes, they designed for it by putting the PCI slots under the second GPU slot, on the assumption that if you can afford a dual-GPU setup, you can afford to buy a PCIe card for whatever you are using in the PCI slot.

And hey, you could do exactly that.
PCI is the lowest priority as it's old as hell, hence it's the one that gets blocked by your second GPU.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

there are options out there, apparently you were unaware of them, and/or chose your motherboard for reasons other than expansion slot configuration

it took me ~30 seconds to get newegg to find a motherboard (even the newest Z97s) that had PCI-e/PCI slots in a configuration that would allow for 2x 2-slot video cards and still have an uncovered PCI slot available

motherboard manufacturers aren't designing the slot spacing for single slot video cards, they're designing based on the fact that they're better off including more slots than simply leaving them out. ATX is a standard, and in that standard they can typically fit ~6-7 expansion slots. If they designed it so that dual-slot video cards would never cover up another slot, they'd simply have room for no more than 4-5 slots instead of the ability to have 6-7 slots. Since not everyone uses dual slot video cards, let alone two of them, why should they make such a restrictive design?

 

[mistersprinkles]

there are options out there, apparently you were unaware of them, and/or chose your motherboard for reasons other than expansion slot configuration

it took me ~30 seconds to get newegg to find a motherboard (even the newest Z97s) that had PCI-e/PCI slots in a configuration that would allow for 2x 2-slot video cards and still have an uncovered PCI slot available

Ding! Winner! I want to be this guy's friend.