Where do the PCI cards go?

[davidstone28]

[MSIC]

"Where do the PCI cards go?"

PCI Heaven.

[RavenNight]

Well there's just room for an X-Fi between the two cards but otherwise...

[arthurleung]

You know what? IT IS A GAMING RIG!
Except an X-Fi, you need nothing else on the machine.
The presence of that SLI setup already defeat all other purposes except gaming.
If you want to add any PCI card, it would:
1) Possibly reduce your FPS in game due to background traffic/software
2) Make it a very energy inefficient server / tv-tuner, whatever you call it.

[Stringent]

A proper soundcard?

[shaithis]

Could you really squeeze an XFi in there? As it isn't an ultimate gaming rig without one IMO.

Is that a HDMI output on the motherboard backplane?

[fredered]

If you did it looks like the cooling of the left card would suffer, if it would fit under that bizzare connector

[RoGuE|SaBeR]

Looks like it covering the MOSFETS, usually where they are placed.

[ilikeoatmeal]

that's the same motherboard i use, an A8N32-SLI Deluxe. They rock. There's enough room for a soundcard in the middle but the double slot GTXs pretty much clutter the rest of the case. The mobo itself is pretty huge and adding in two 8in x 2in gpus is basically crazy. The verticle fan is optional for cooling the cpu and mobo, but not required as it has a pretty awesome fanless design to dissipate heat through copper pipeline heatsinks.

[Tobeman]

Ah, two of my cards in action *jealous*

I believe the Expert edition of the latest DFI mobo took the extra spacing idea from Asus also to allow for two dual slot coolers in SLI.

As for the comment about HDMI.. the little red guy? As far as I know thats an external SATA port

[Anders]

Whats with the heat pipes and vertical fan?

Awesome, must be cooling something like the chipset?

[blueprint]

Needs a better cooler I reckon! That's just a stock boring one!

Iv'e often wondered, what are those small 'mini' PCI slots next to the PCI-E slots. My board is SLi and it has them.

What are they for?

[arthurleung]

Needs a better cooler I reckon! That's just a stock boring one!

Iv'e often wondered, what are those small 'mini' PCI slots next to the PCI-E slots. My board is SLi and it has them.

What are they for?

The long slot is PCIe 16x slot, the medium one which looks different is the original slow PCI slots, most new boards have the very short one which is PCIe 1x, and some with a slightly longer one, usually a 4x slot.

The 1x slot is not too commonly used, but there are tv-tuners, low end SATA cards, network cards using that slot. The 1x port have a 250MB/s up 250MB/s down configuration (if my memory serves), and the 16x graphic port is 16x the speed which is 4000MB/s.

4x slot (usually with only 2 of the lanes connected) have 500MB/s up&down and used for faster cards like RAID cards.

Although not much devices use PCIe 1x/2x/4x/8x slot apart from graphic cards. And those Dual-slot coolers also kind of defeating the purpose of having those slots.

[Workaholic]

Its got enough audio outputs including optical by the looks of it, 2 network ports, 4 usb and 1 firewire I think.

Whats else do you need apart from sli?

Can't see firewire?
What about serial/gameports for the old fashioned ones around?
What about a SPD IN (most likely that's out...)

[arthurleung]

Can't see firewire?
What about serial/gameports for the old fashioned ones around?
What about a SPD IN (most likely that's out...)

Game port is there, if you look down to the bottom of the board you see loads of pin. Game port is the Orange bunch
Firewire is there too I believe (Black) with USB being Blue
Just next to the game port there is a serial port too

Not everything need to be on the backplane

And regarding to SPD IN, due to the nature of the AC97 chipset I think you can change it between input and output.

[Workaholic]

Game port is there, if you look down to the bottom of the board you see loads of pin. Game port is the Orange bunch
Firewire is there too I believe (Black) with USB being Blue
Just next to the game port there is a serial port too

Not everything need to be on the backplane

And regarding to SPD IN, due to the nature of the AC97 chipset I think you can change it between input and output.

That means you have to get a separate backplate. Or make your own front plate.