MSI Gaming 9 AC

OllieBarrie · October 21, 2014

I was looking to get a premium Z97 board and I found this which would go well with the MSI 980s. But I've heard that this mobo is a bit tight for SLI cards. Can anyone clear this up?

Thanks

H4X3R · October 21, 2014

Many Z97 mobos have a "tight" first slot, however in this case it is because of the shroud of the IO. Just use the 2 middle-end slots, even with x8 bandwidth you won't be bottlenecking the cards. Or, try fit one of the 980s in the first slot and then put the 2nd in the 3rd slot (3rd pci e 3.0 x16 (wired 8x) slot) so that the cards have room to breathe.

OllieBarrie · October 21, 2014

This is the Z97 variant, supposedly it's similar.

TheSLSAMG · October 21, 2014

It's definitely tight.

There is no space between the GPUs, which wrecks airflow and temps unless you're going reference. You would have to put the cards in the first and last slots to get meaningful airflow, and it would look plain weird.