Will 2 GTX 970s fit my build

[smush]

Will 2 Gigabyte G1 GTX 970s fit my Silverstone FT02 case with a MSI x58 Pro motherboard? According to scan.co.uk it says its width is 2.5 slots but that is width not actual used slots and I'm wondering if some motherboards are laid out differently so rule doesn't apply? The MSI GTX 970 has width of 2 slots but I'd rather get the better Gigabyte card but will settle for MSI if needed to SLI them


Case: http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=242
Motherboard: http://uk.msi.com/product/mb/X58_Pro...-specification

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Remember,that most of the GTX970 cards are consuming as much as reference HD7970,GTX680 and GTX770 cards and are close to GTX780 cards:

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Palit/GeFo...er_average.gif
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_9...er_average.gif
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_9...er_average.gif

So if anything I would be more worried about cooling in the case.

[smush]

I think my case is big enough for the cooling I'm mostly concerned with it will fit I will be getting a new PSU...I read somewhere that someone couldnt SLI to of the Gigabyte cards as the back plates touched causing the fans to be going at 100% all the time.

[MrJim]

Will 2 Gigabyte G1 GTX 970s fit my Silverstone FT02 case with a MSI x58 Pro motherboard? According to scan.co.uk it says its width is 2.5 slots but that is width not actual used slots and I'm wondering if some motherboards are laid out differently so rule doesn't apply? The MSI GTX 970 has width of 2 slots but I'd rather get the better Gigabyte card but will settle for MSI if needed to SLI them


Case: http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=242
Motherboard: http://uk.msi.com/product/mb/X58_Pro...-specification

I've got an MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G card in an FT02 myself - the card is actually quite thin for a two-slot card, more like 1 and two-thirds I can recommend the MSI card, it's silent in Windows (fans don't spin), and virtually silent when gaming - I can't hear it over the three AP181 fans in the FTO2.

[MrJim]

So if anything I would be more worried about cooling in the case.

Cooling two GTX 970's in the FT02 wouldn't be an issue...it's one of the most effective air-cooled cases ever made. Three 180mm fans together with the rotated design produce a huge amount of cooling

[smush]

Is yours a windowed model, mine isn't
So I can get 2 of those in SLI? It's annoying because I wanted the Gigabyte as it is slightly quicker than the MSI in stock speeds but its also a little larger

[MrJim]

Is yours a windowed model, mine isn't
So I can get 2 of those in SLI? It's annoying because I wanted the Gigabyte as it is slightly quicker than the MSI in stock speeds but its also a little larger

Yes, mine's the windowed version of the FT02. Looking at it you should be able to fit two of the MSI cards, even allowed a bit of extra room for the sound-dampening foam on the inside of the side of the case. There's about a 2cm gap between the top-edge heat-pipe and the case.

[smush]

Yes, mine's the windowed version of the FT02. Looking at it you should be able to fit two of the MSI cards, even allowed a bit of extra room for the sound-dampening foam on the inside of the side of the case. There's about a 2cm gap between the top-edge heat-pipe and the case.

I have been told elsewhere that my CPU (Core i7 930 @2.8GHz) will be a very big bottleneck for 2 970's what do you think?
and I just noticed my Mobo only supports PCIe 2.0 but I think the card uses 3.0 will this be an issue or is it just like USBs and SATA where they are backwards compatible?

[MrJim]

You might like to look into overclocking your 930 - it should reach at least 4Ghz with reasonable cooling, at which point I doubt it would bottleneck your performance much. What resolution do you game at, & what type of games do you tend to play?

PCIe 2 won't make a huge difference I think. Can your motherboard support 2 x 16 lanes PCIe 2?

[MrJim]

Just found this graphic:



So 2 x 16 lanes is no problem. I doubt you'd actually notice any difference if you were on an X99 motherboard with PCIe 3...there may be a few percent difference in performance though.

[smush]

I've read that someone with a 2600k at 4.6Ghz is experiencing bottlenecking. I could get a 2.66GHz 6 core Xeon for LGA1366 quite cheap that might be better?
I know you have the MSI cards as mentioned but do you think the bigger Gigabyte cards would fit SLI? as they have the backplate which MSI do not have.

[mikex]

I am looking into buying a GTX 970 soon also. I hear good things about the gigabyte g1 gaming version and was wondering would it fit inside a fractal r4 define case? thanks guys. Sorry to hijack but didn't want to start a new thread for a small thing like this.

[MrJim]

I think it really depends on the type of games you play, & the resolution you play them at? Games like Starcraft & the Civilisation series are known to be quite heavy on the CPU, whereas most FPS games tend to be GPU limited. Likewise If you play at higher resolutions & higher quality settings, you're more likely to be GPU limited. With SLI, it's possible you'd be CPU limited though...it just depends A 2600K at 4.6Ghz is still powerful enough for most gaming though. If you could overclock your i7 930 to around 4Ghz, I'd personally think it'd be fine. You could of course upgrade your graphics first, and see how it goes? If you need a more powerful CPU, just upgrade your system at a later date.

I don't have any first-hand experience of the Gigabyte 970, but I doubt the back-plate would make all that much difference. My previous card was an Asus 670 which had a backplate, & it added only a few millimetres to the thickness of the card.

[watercooled]

Where have you been told that your CPU will be a bottleneck? Because that really doesn't seem likely. The world bottleneck is so frequently misused.

I wouldn't worry about PCIe either - this is something else people make out to be more of an issue than it actually is.

[smush]

Where have you been told that your CPU will be a bottleneck? Because that really doesn't seem likely. The world bottleneck is so frequently misused.

I wouldn't worry about PCIe either - this is something else people make out to be more of an issue than it actually is.

It was a discussion in this forum I had http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=393666

[watercooled]

Seems like a whole lot of rubbish advice to me TBH.

Some links to look over to back up what I'm saying:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8227/d...and-i5-4690k/5
http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia...440/index.html
http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia...-4k/index.html

And in regards to PCIe scaling: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/I...caling/11.html

See how much of a massive difference it all makes?