Help building a 3 sli gtx 980s, starting with 1 and working my way up to 3 before the year ends

[PaulR91]

My main idea was to build a 2 sli gtx 980s, (why gtx 980s i get them for about $400 at my job) so with that being said, i wanted to know what would be a good motherboard power supply i don't know what ever you guys recommend me for a good performing build of 3 gtx 980s, so for now im ordering my first gtx980 maybe after summer ill be buying the 3rd one, i really just need help with what i need for when that time comes and how can my system support it.

so i wanted to build a 4k gaming machine to be able to handle high hopefully 60fps on 4k on only 1 4kmonitor, i would like to do some 4k video editing since i have a lot of it record it and stored but i cant even edit it, but most of all is going to be for high graphic gaming, i do a lot of Rome 2, Battlefield 4 and would like to play Evolve on it since it looks very demanding everything on highest settings, and rome 2 specially i would like to max cap of units on battles without lag.

i don't have money to wast so please don't show me like 600dollar motherboards lol  

Here originally i had this planned out from a lot of help from a good friend here in the forums, originally was 2sli build, what would need to be changed here now for 3sli? VERY IMPORTANT i need a strong wifi anthena/card/motherboard since wifi is the only way to get internet where i am at.

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($316.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Nepton 240M 76.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($108.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Motherboard: Asus Z97-PRO(Wi-Fi ac) ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($208.29 @ SuperBiiz) 

Memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($204.99 @ Amazon) 

Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($326.99 @ Amazon) 

Storage: Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($96.88 @ OutletPC) 

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4GB Video Card  ($420.00) 

Case: NZXT S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($65.55 @ Directron) 

Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($80.99 @ NCIX US) 

Total: $1829.67

[othertomperson]

Obligatory "don't bother with 3, just get two" post. The third will at best not add very much, and in some cases will reduce performance.

 

If you want to spend this much, that's fine, but personally for 4K I'd recommend either two GTX 970s or two R9 290Xs. The performance will be very similar to 980s but cost a fraction of it.

[Mr.Dread]

I too am looking at doing an SLI 980 build and noticed that you may want to look at other options for you mother board. The current one you have listed has 3 pci slots (two 3.0 and one 2.0) and if you end up doing a 3 way SLI you going to only get 2 at x8 and one at x4. The board i plan on going with is ASRock Z97 Extreme9 (if you can find it in stock). You can run dual pci at x16, triple at x8, x8, x16: and if you want to go all the way quad at x8.

[Mr.Dread]

Obligatory "don't bother with 3, just get two" post. The third will at best not add very much, and in some cases will reduce performance.

 

If you want to spend this much, that's fine, but personally for 4K I'd recommend either two GTX 970s or two R9 290Xs. The performance will be very similar to 980s but cost a fraction of it.

 

Well if he can, like he says, get a 980 for 420$, i would get the 980's especially with the current uproar. 

[PaulR91]

Obligatory "don't bother with 3, just get two" post. The third will at best not add very much, and in some cases will reduce performance.

 

If you want to spend this much, that's fine, but personally for 4K I'd recommend either two GTX 970s or two R9 290Xs. The performance will be very similar to 980s but cost a fraction of it.

like i mentioned before i get my gtx980s for only like 400 bucks at my job, so thats not an issue, just wanted to know what else i would need on that list to be changed, i know motherboard needs to be changed, but which would be a good bet?

[PaulR91]

I too am looking at doing an SLI 980 build and noticed that you may want to look at other options for you mother board. The current one you have listed has 3 pci slots (two 3.0 and one 2.0) and if you end up doing a 3 way SLI you going to only get 2 at x8 and one at x4. The board i plan on going with is ASRock Z97 Extreme9 (if you can find it in stock). You can run dual pci at x16, triple at x8, x8, x16: and if you want to go all the way quad at x8.

any other suggestion for the motherboard? any that have wifi ac on it? with 3 slots for those cards?

[Mr.Dread]

any other suggestion for the motherboard? any that have wifi ac on it? with 3 slots for those cards?

 

Select away at the motherboard of your dreams.

[othertomperson]

 

Well if he can, like he says, get a 980 for 420$, i would get the 980's especially with the current uproar. 

 

The current uproar is people taking sensationalist headlines and running with them. Even with its memory split in two parts, the 970 is still a very good GPU, and two of them are decent at 4K. Two 290Xs are also very competent and perform slightly better but obviously come with heat and power consumption issues.

 

like i mentioned before i get my gtx980s for only like 400 bucks at my job, so thats not an issue, just wanted to know what else i would need on that list to be changed, i know motherboard needs to be changed, but which would be a good bet?

 

Fair enough, I just wanted to emphasise that you don't *have* to jump to the 980. If you want to, that's up to you

 

I still wouldn't recommend going triple SLI though.

[PaulR91]

 

 

 

The current uproar is people taking sensationalist headlines and running with them. Even with its memory split in two parts, the 970 is still a very good GPU, and two of them are decent at 4K. Two 290Xs are also very competent and perform slightly better but obviously come with heat and power consumption issues.

 

 

Fair enough, I just wanted to emphasise that you don't *have* to jump to the 980. If you want to, that's up to you

 

I still wouldn't recommend going triple SLI though.

 

but if i were to go that route, anything that you would recommend me to handle 3sli?

[Syraz]

3 cards wont fit in that case with that mobo

 

only 7 pci slots on case and the 3rd spot on board is in the 7th pcie slot. 

[fleshwoundf08x]

Why not wait and see if the drop 980ti and 2 way sli those.

[PaulR91]

3 cards wont fit in that case with that mobo

 

only 7 pci slots on case and the 3rd spot on board is in the 7th pcie slot. 

so im trying to fit 3 gtx 980s, and a network card the PCE-AC68, so what would be a good motherboard to fit all that ?