Graphics Second GTX 460 won't fit new motherboard....second card up for grabs!

Hi everyone,

Firstly, I'm not sure if this is allowed or not, but I thought I'd give it a try. Basically, you can follow my progress from my posts in the past, but the story is as follows:

1) Had a Q6700 with 2 x 8800GT SLI set-up
2) Upgraded to 2 x GTX 460 (having taken advice on here!)
3) CPU proving to be a bottle-neck, decided to upgrade motherboard, cpu and memory
4) For the first time ever, built my own system from scratch (with the help of the excellent guide in last month's Custom PC)
5) To my horror, discovered that the new motherboard ASUS P6X58D-E doesn't actually house both GTX cards!! I thought I had done my research, and it looked big enough from photos...
6) Can't bear to let all my hard work go to waste and return the motherboard, cpu & memory
7) One month old Gigabyte GTX 460 1GB (GV-N460OC-1GI) bought from dabs for £180 left over.
8) Looking to re-coup around £130 plus postage. The card is only 1 month old, still got all the original box and packaging.
9) Anyone interested?

Mods, if this isn't allowed, please delete the thread and I'll have to ebay it instead!

Many thanks,
Daniel

 

What do you mean it doesn't fit? Is the cooler too tall?

 

The PCI slots are spaced too close together, the 460s I have are too deep to both fit in. Gutted

 

Yeah that's a bummer... you can't even put the second card in the bottom slot because the 3-way connector doesn't work with these cards.

 

Thats a bit of a bummer!

 

Wait, hold the phone! I did a quick search on eBay and there are long 2-way SLi bridges available. OP, look into those before you ditch the second card?

 

Why cant you just use slot 1 and slot 3 ?? Ok you will get x16 and x8 but I doubt you will notice any difference and the SLI bridge will reach it does on mine.

 

Anandtech did an article on this. There's barely ANY loss with 16x and 8x.

 

But the standard two-way SLi bridge that comes with the ASUS board isn't long enough to reach slot 3. At least i don't think so.

EDIT: Well i'll be damned. I dug out my supposedly normal SLi bridge and it should reach. But from the limited picuteres i found on the ASUS board's bundle that one kind of seems shorter... i don't know anymore OP could you take a look?

 

I'm not sure, I'll check later, but I think it's even too big to fit in the 3rd slot....

 

Mine's a Asus and it fits fine I have mine in slot 1 and slot 3 and it improves the cooling aswell.

The only problem is that most case's dont have enough pci slots for the lower card which is why I cut a extra one in my stacker case.

 

LOL that would have to be a seriously impressive cooler. What case do you have? There might not be enough room under the motherboard for all we know.

 

cards fault really its obviously wider than 2 slots which is a ball ache

 

It's a Cooler Master Elite 330 I think, not sure on the number, but it looks right from the pictures. It was from my original Arbico-made system a few years ago. The card will not fit in slot 3 either as there's not enough clearance room at the bottom of the case. Perhaps it's worth getting a new case, I really would hate to see the other 460 go....? Do you think a 3-way SLI connector, only connecting 2 cards would work?

Off to work now, back tomorrow!

 

Here you go:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/New-Long-Nvid...raphics_Video_TV_Cards_TW&hash=item27b5539b42

 

Like i said, that won't work those connectors are only good for cards that have two bridge connectors.

You'll need something like this

EDIT: Hah ninja'd ^

Yeah it's about time for a new case i'd say.

 

I think i beat you by a minute there DragunovHUN :=)
+ UK

 

The Gigabyte 460 OC cards are dual-slot design, so there should definitely be enough room in the motherboard for them both.
Just as a tip, you'll be using the long dark blue slots for graphics cards, not the light blue ones, or the 1xPCI-e slot (the really short one) - if I had a pound every time I'd heard the phrase "You're putting it in the wrong slot!", I'd be a wealthy man!

If you want to leave a lot of extra room between the cards, you'll be going for the long dark blue slot and the white one. Of course, you may not have enough room in your case for this, but the option's there, at least.

Search eBay for "long sli", and you get a few results up. The flexible 12cm ones are probably your best bet. There's one for £7 there, as well as a couple slightly cheaper if you care to wait for auctions or go for rigid ones.

 

Most cases only have 7 pci slots which is where the problem is, You need at least 8 pci slots to use the 3rd slot on the mobo for a dual slot card.

If that was me I would get a bigger case.

This is why I've just bought a Mountain Mods case because it has 10 pci slots, I'm not saying you should buy one of those but you need 8 slots.

 

8 slots aren't absoloutely necessary, you just need some extra room under the board so the card can hang off. 7 slot cases tend not to have that though