Motherboard for 2 x M.2 PCIe + 3 x GTX 1080Ti GPus

ammarmalhas · Apr 29, 2017

I am planning on using 2 x Samsung 960 EVO Series 250GB PCIe NVMe cards, and 3 x EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FOUNDERS EDITION GPU's for my flight simulator build.

I am looking at the ASUS ROG Maximus IX Hero and I plan on using Corsair H115i CPU water cooling.

My questions, and excuse my ignorance as I am a complete newbie at mobo hardware and terminology:

1. Will all 5 PCIe cards above fit on this motherboard in a full tower case? Is there a photo somewhere that will show me how these fit and where each goes? Please note the 3 GPUs will not be in SLI.

2. Will I have a heating (cooling) problem with the 3 GPU's with each throwing hot air at the one next to it?

3. I plan on using a 1500W PSU, would this be enough?

4. Will the ASUS ROG Maximus IX Hero do the job and/or is there a bigger motherboard out there that will fit things easily and allow for more expansion?

5. Would a ROG MAXIMUS IX APEX be a better choice? Will it take all 5 cards?

I really appreciate some help and guidance.

Thanks.

eyupo92 · May 3, 2017

Most probably APEX might work, but Hero will not.

https://www.asus.com/tr/Motherboards/ROG-MAXIMUS-IX-APEX/specifications/

https://www.asus.com/tr/Motherboards/ROG-MAXIMUS-IX-HERO/specifications/

Both cards support 2 x 960 Evo at full speeds ( NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4) with some caveats : The second 960 Evo will disable two SATA ports on Hero. What it will do on APEX requres reading the user manual.

But, theoretically, both have at least three slots where you can install GTX 1080 Ti's, but:
on both cards, you can not run any of these 3 1080 Ti's in x16 mode and NVIDIA requires at least x8 for a GPU to run.
- On Hero, the configuration will become : x8/x8/x2 -- here there is no guarantee the GPU will work on x2, let alone the performance issues.
- On Apex, the configuration will become x8/x8/-/x4 - here the third GPU may work but will suffer performance issues.

Why is that ? Because Kaby Lake CPU's or SKylake CPU's have only PCIe x16 capacity, and this must be divided onto GPU's.

Now, on Apex, there is a technology called DIMM.2, you install your 960 Evo's into two special slots located rightside of RAM slots. Now, there are just 2 RAM slots with max capacity of 32 GB RAM. However, each 1080 Ti has a memory of 11 GB, 3 x 11 GB = 33 GB. It is such a bad idea to have less RAM than your GPU VRAM that nobody does: to utilize VRAM, you have to use RAM as well. I had only once seen such a configuration in the past, an idiot had purchased a 6 GB GPU and had only 4 GB of RAM and his computer was shutting down every 10 minutes.

If you want to get maximum performance from your 3 x 1080 Ti's then you need to have a 40 lane CPU; that is one of these : http://www.anandtech.com/show/10337/the-intel-broadwell-e-review-core-i7-6950x-6900k-6850k-and-6800k-tested-up-to-10-cores

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2737668/lane-cpu-lane-cpu.html

http://www.overclock.net/t/1606096/worth-upgrading-to-a-40-lane-cpu-and-board

If you absolutely require this; your current options are a 40 lane CPU and a motherboard that can run all 1080Ti's like this one : https://www.asus.com/tr/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_X99/specifications/

It says :

40-Lane CPU-
3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16, x16/x16, x16/x16/x8) *1
28-Lane CPU-
3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 ( x16, x16/x8, x16/x8/x4) *1

But, this card does not support more than one 960 Evo.

Your best option would be to wait for the rumoured X299 motherboards and accompanying 40 lane CPU's to become available.

Best Regards,

eyupo92 · May 3, 2017

For 3 x 1080 Ti's , a dual CPU workstation motherboard like these can be used :

https://www.asus.com/tr/Motherboards/Z10PED16_WS/overview/
https://www.asus.com/tr/Motherboards/Z10PED8_WS/

Both mobo's have just one slot for 960 Evo; it is not clear if any of them will allow a second 960 Evo using a riser card like Asus Hyper m.2 or similar.

ammarmalhas · May 3, 2017

Thank u Sir for some well appreciated advice.
One last question would be if I install only two of the cards and in SLI and put 3 projectors on the two cards, would that give me comparable performance of one projector per card (3 projectors / 3 GPU)?
I am trying to figure a system for Flight simulation with P3D and FSX.

ammarmalhas · May 4, 2017

Eyup Bey,
The SABERTOOTH X99 description says that if a M.2 is used in a PCIex4 then the PCIe x16_3 will be disabled! Do u know what this means exactly? Can I still connect 3 1080Ti and an M.2? The board seems to have 5 large PCIe slots and two small ones! Why do they put all these slots if only 3 will work simultaneously?
Since I am constrained with shipping options and I need to have these shipped asap I have so far orderd the ASUS Maximus IX APEX and an i7-7700k and am now ordering the SABERTOOTH X99 with a i7-6850k! It looks like I will be wasting some money trying to figure out these details, I will consider it tuition fees

I will have two good machines that will help my flight sim setup.
Any more thoughts would be highly appreciated and if u can PM me it may be easier and quicker. Thank u Sir.

eyupo92 · May 4, 2017

If your X99 motherboard is not shipped, then you might consider to change it to this: https://www.asus.com/tr/Motherboards/X99E_WS/overview/

Somehow it says it supports 4 GPU's all with x16 speeds on 40 lane CPU's. With 6850K, you should be able to use all three cards.

It is never easy to get these WS series cards though, they are rare to find, but they are worth every penny.

X99 Sabertooth board has 4 PCIe x16 slots, this means you will need to install your cards into slots 1, 2 and 4 and leave slot 3 empty.

As I mentioned in another thread: on motherboards what you see is not what you get. Having a slot/socket on motherboard, a working device that can be connected to that slot/socket, installing working device into that slot, attaching power to the device etc does not mean it will work : there are limitations, like number of available PCIe lanes etc. Most of the slots work right away, but for some slots you have to choose - either a device of type A on slot A1, or a device of type B on slot B1 etc. The idea is to give choice to the users and let them decide on the limitations.

In any case, you will have two very good machines, that's for sure. But, a workstation class motherboard would be a much better choice.

By the way, please make sure you order correct RAM for your motherboards - select from QVL list specifified in the ssupport section of motherboard. And it must be of correct amount. In Turkey we have an old saying "one gram of flesh covers a thousand faults" Mostly used for meals etc. But in PC's my version is this : "1 GB of RAM covers thousands of hours of waiting". Get as much RAM as you can.

In your case, I suspect reliability is much more important than a few percent of speed. Therefore I would say stay away from overclock RAM like G.Skill or Crucial etc and get a reliable brand like Kingston or Crucial RAM. Bad and incompatible RAM will cause lots of issues.

eyupo92 · May 4, 2017

Actually, you can look up Asus website to see which X99 motherboards fulfill your needs.

https://www.asus.com/tr/Motherboards/Intel-platform-Products/ and select X99 as your chipset.

You will be presented with a number of options avaialble in your region.

In my region, the followign choices appear to support 3 and 4 GPU's:

Says 4 way SLI : https://www.asus.com/tr/Motherboards/ROG-RAMPAGE-V-EDITION-10/

Has a graphic showing how the PCI lanes are allocated to 1, 2, 3 and 4 graphics cards : https://www.asus.com/tr/Motherboards/RAMPAGE_V_EXTREMEU31/

Has a graphic showing how the PCI lanes are allocated to 1, 2, and 3 graphics cards :https://www.asus.com/tr/Motherboards/ROG-STRIX-X99-GAMING/

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Motherboard for 2 x M.2 PCIe + 3 x GTX 1080Ti GPus

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