Can motherboard supply enough power?

[Benevolent Deity]

Hello,

I'm planning to run 3ea. PNY 9800GT EE graphics cards in a new computer I'm building. The only power specs PNY gives indicate that the minimum requirement is a 450W PCI Express-compliant system power supply with a combined 12V current rating of 24A or more. The problem is that I will be using 3 of these cards.

Unlike many graphics cards these do not have a supplementary power connector, so they will be drawing all of their power from the motherboard's PCIe power buses themselves. While I can obviously get a power supply that will deliver anything I want, I am concerned about the current handling capability of the motherboard PCIe buses themselves. I plan to use an Asus P6X58D motherboard but I cannot find any specifications on its power capabilities either. Any ideas/suggestions?

Thanks,
Ray

 

[hunter315]

The motherboard will be fine providing the full 75W each PCI-E slot is capable of providing. A low quality board might have issues but an ASUS X58 board should be built to handle that fairly easily.

Why do you need 3 9800GTs though? I assume its for a 6 monitor setup?

 

[Benevolent Deity]

Everyone,

Thanks for the quick responses. Yes, my primary goal is to support 6 monitors, with independent control of the settings on each and the task bar on only one of them. I currently do only program development and desktop publishing but I don't want to rule out gaming for the future by arbitrarily selecting the wrong video cards.

The reason I came up with the 9800GT series is somewhat arbitrary. I don't know much about the technicalities of the currently available products and after some research the 9800s seemed to have a pretty good price for the relative features advertised for it. I've found the 9800GT EE cards from PNY for $85 each after rebate. However, I'm not really that concerned about price other than I see no point in spending a lot if I don't really need the full capabilities of what I'm buying. In my current system I have 3 Matrox 2-head cards and its really sluggish. They also make a 4-head card but it's over $500 and it's not supposed to be much good for gaming.

Another consideration is that the Asus P6X58D motherboard I plan to get has 2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, 1 x PCIe x1 slot, and 2 x PCI slots. I don't want to use any double width graphics cards because I would like to be able to use all of the slots. I do a lot of hardware development and I often need to plug in some custom cards.

I would certainly appreciate any recommendations any of you are willing to take the time to provide regarding why other choices in video cards might be better than the 9800FT EEs. It should be obvious by now that I'm somewhat in the dark about all of this.

Thanks,
Ray

 

[Benevolent Deity]

Sorry, my last post should have said 3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slots.

 

[Guest]

I have a 6 monitor rig.
I do not do gaming. (i trade stocks).
From personal experience, do not get video cards and mix pci with pcie, etc..

You should conider getting a motherboard with 3 or 4 pciex2 ports or you will have conflicts, and a headache.
The mobo will be fine if you have a good power supply.

i have an evga x58 motherboard.
It has 4 pcie slots. i use 3 of them with ati graphics cards.
i am told id be better off with nvidea cards, as my motherboard supports sli, not crossfire.

if you want to run independent tasks on each monitor, definitely buy a copy of ultramon software.
It is a must for your situation.

Sorry, my last post should have said 3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slots.