Can I move my motherboard so that a dual slot gpu will fit?

[DwarfOverlord]

Hi,

I am fairly new to the building world and recently bought a upgradable pc, which I plan on upgrading.
My current graphics card is a MSI N430GT which as most of you will know is a one-slot gpu. I am planning on getting a GTX 560 Ti which is a dual-slot gpu.
I have plenty of slots free on my case, however the motherboard (ASRock N68-VGS3 UCC) doesn't go far enough down to allow two slots. So can I move the motherboard downwards so it can, or somehow make it fit or what?

 

[pro-gamer]

if you wanna go for dual-card called sli you need a motherboard with dual pci-e slots then you will be abe to do.
by the what is your full specs:

 

[welshmousepk]

as long as there's room in the case you'll be fine. it doesn't actually need two motherboard slots, it just takes up two slots worth of room.

 

[phishy714]

if you wanna go for dual-card called sli you need a motherboard with dual pci-e slots then you will be abe to do.
by the what is your full specs:

I don't think he is talking about running SLI on the system. I think that he just wants to replace that 450 with a 560ti which is a two-slot card.

@OP

Are you saying this is more of a computer case issue where the slots on the motherboard is so small that it won't line up well with the case's addon slots?

 

[DelroyMonjo]

You only have 1 PCIe 16 slot which is where you prrobably have your current card. No moving needed. Remove old card, insert new card.

 

[jitpublisher]

I believe he is talking about slots on the back of the case, and no you cannot move the motherboard down.

 

[phishy714]

^ yeah that's what I thought he was talking about. Get a new case buddy.

 

[DwarfOverlord]

yea, jitpublisher thats what I was trying to say. Oh well, new case then I suppose.

 

[DwarfOverlord]

Actually...I don't think I need a new case. Just looked at it and I have two PCI-E x16 slots. Currently my GT 430 is up the top, and two slots down is my networking adapter which is a PCI-E x16 slot taker as well, and it works. So maybe, if I just put the networking adapter up the top slot and put the 560 ti where the adapter is, maybe it will work. What do you think?
Oh yeah, full rig is:
AMD Phenom II X4 840 @3.20 gHz
N430GT 1GB
8GB Kingston RAM
500GB hard drive of some sort...
Don't know about power supply, so I hope the 560 Ti won't blow it up...

 

[welshmousepk]

That should work fine. Some mobos don't like you putting the GPU in the bottom slot though.
Why cant you just put the gpu card in the top slot though? and the network card in the bottom one?

A picture of some sort would really help here, as im still unsure why this is causing you nay trouble.

 

[phishy714]

The reason that may not work, DwarfOverlord, is because the PCIe slots work differently depending on the motherboard. By default, the top PCIe slot will run at x16 bandwith. Other slots will run at x8 and x4 (depending on the motherboard). If you put it in a x4 slot, you will be severly bottlenecking your card, and you will not get the full performance out of it.. and when you spend $200+ on a graphics card, that's just a waste.

Seriously though, you can do a couple of things. you can either get a new motherboard that will possibly have the slots further down or something.. or just get yourself a new, $60 case. That will be the cheapest thing you can do, and the easiest really.

 

[DwarfOverlord]

Best answer selected by DwarfOverlord.