How many NIC cards will my motherboard support

[mhlkig]

Hello -

I am new to upgrading my computer and have recently purchased tv tuners (got rid of directv) that I want to connect via ethernet so I want three ethernet connections put in my pc that I use as my HTPC. I was wondering if three Intel NIC cards will work on my H-RS880-uATX (Aloe) motherboard at once? I have three PCIe slots available and the card I am looking at is the Intel PWLA8391GT. Also would it just be plug and play type of a setup for the NIC cards? I appreciate the help in advance.

 

[mitchflossin]

Yes that will be fine as long as you have the available slots. The NICs should be plug and play and probably won't require any additional software to be installed. Once you've physically installed them and booted into the OS, the drivers should be installed automatically. If not, just download the drivers from the Internet (they're typically more up to date than the software that comes with the equipment).

 

[c911darkwolf]

you could actually support up to 15+ connections.. at this point your computers speed will die due to it constantly performing checks on network status instead of processing actual request.

Also IRQ issues may occur on older machines at that many network cards.

But what your doing is perfectly fine.