Must I choose between Sli 16x16 and no PCIEx1slot?

[MajorBrass]

I'd love to buy the new Asus x99 PRO but it looks like if I run two 980's in SLI x16x16, I would not have access to and use of the PCIEx1 slots. The cards will cover those.

I'd want to be able to have the sli in x16 x16 (slot 1 & 3) and the PCEI slots usable for my Creative Z sound card and the add on M.2 PCIE add on card.

I currently have the z77 sabertooth that has the PCEI slot offset as to not be blocked by the video card. All the x99 boards have this issue. It seems like a very poor design and layout to me! Or am I missing something?

Would the Creative Z function correctly if installed in pcie slot 2 x8 or pcie slot 4 which is x4 on the Asus x99 PRO?

Please help me understand. Thank you.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Would the Creative Z function correctly if installed in pcie slot 2 x8 or pcie slot 4 which is x4 on the Asus x99 PRO?

Yes.

Although there's really no point to using an additional sound card. The ALC1150 is a solid codec, the amps on a motherboard that expensive are probably quite good, and if you actually cared about audio quality enough to spend money, you'd just get an external DAC, stick it in a faraday cage, wave the incense, and run the S/PDIF from the motherboard out to that. (Bits are bits.)

So I think you're probably just wasting time.

Also, enabling the additional slots may allocate lanes away from your GPUs and throttle them.

 

[MajorBrass]

Traditionally, I have found onboard sound subpar for gaming- causing audio stuttering and inferior quality but maybe times have changed in the 3-4 years since I built my current PC.

It's beyond me why Asus would choose this layout for such high end board that a good % of people would want to run sli on.

X99 Gigabyte has the layout I need for sli and sound card but is poorly reviewed and does not have the OC features Asus has added. Asus z77 has been a great board for me. MSI has the same poor layout, sli video cards blocking the pcei slots needed for the Creative Z

 

[Deders]

8x PCIe3 is more than fast enough for 980's in SLI.

 

[Auric]

Quality is not just fidelity but content including effects, not unlike graphics. Presumably modern games do not limit content levels so much. S/PDIF would reduce quality since implying either limiting to matrixed stereo or lossy encoding -possibly with a delay. If not a sound card for aforementioned reasons, then HDMI can at least get the LPCM out to an external device for both speakers and headphones.

 

[heymrdj]

I'd love to buy the new Asus x99 PRO but it looks like if I run two 980's in SLI x16x16, I would not have access to and use of the PCIEx1 slots. The cards will cover those.

I'd want to be able to have the sli in x16 x16 (slot 1 & 3) and the PCEI slots usable for my Creative Z sound card and the add on M.2 PCIE add on card.

I currently have the z77 sabertooth that has the PCEI slot offset as to not be blocked by the video card. All the x99 boards have this issue. It seems like a very poor design and layout to me! Or am I missing something?

Would the Creative Z function correctly if installed in pcie slot 2 x8 or pcie slot 4 which is x4 on the Asus x99 PRO?

Please help me understand. Thank you.

The Creative Z would function fine in any of the slots as it's an extremely low bandwidth device. But if you want the 1x slot, use a riser.

http://www.amazon.com/HOTER-PCI-E-Ex.../dp/B0057M0ABA

 

[MajorBrass]

Wow, thanks! I had thought of that and asked at Fry's last night and was told there wasn't such a thing. I may very well go that route.

 

[heymrdj]

Seems people have good luck with them, but based on my rudimentary knowledge of EMI I'll just throw "your mileage may vary" out there.