Which sli bridge?

[rossta]

2 hours ago, Dennis Miller said:

 

 

Been trying to find an answer to this question for a little while now.  I'm planning a build with the Pro board (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WXDBf7) which has the same Asus-specific slot spacing.  Even called Asus tech support..."just get the 4-way bridge to be sure" was their answer.  

 

I see you went down the 2 x ssd route. I was torn between single and dual ssd but budget sadly came first! 

One thing I have noted since the build is that the 3200 ram I got potentially only runs at 2400 which is slightly irritating! Apparently it's to do with the mobo, so just goes to show I should have researched more!! 

[rossta]

4 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

No problem at all with the one you ordered.  When running 3-Way or greater, SLI requires both.  With two, you only need a single connection to each card.  Hope that helps.

Great, thanks buddy ☺️

[done12many2]

12 minutes ago, rossta said:

One thing I have noted since the build is that the 3200 ram I got potentially only runs at 2400 which is slightly irritating! Apparently it's to do with the mobo, so just goes to show I should have researched more!! 

Man, I had one hell of a time with RAM at the beginning of this adventure.  I even returned a board after being told by Asus that the IMC on my CPU was defective.  I laughed, returned the board and discovered that it was the issue in my case.  

 

x99 and RAM are extremely finicky.  I was limited to 2400 MHz in the beginning, but have worked through that nicely.  I'm sure we can get you dialed in.

 

 

[done12many2]

4 minutes ago, rossta said:

I see you went down the 2 x ssd route. I was torn between single and dual ssd but budget sadly came first! 

I use a 950 Pro M.2 as my OS/boot drive and it's worked out pretty will.  When I'm messing with large files, I offload them from the OS drive to the 4 x 850 Evos in RAID 0.  I set them up in RAID 0 because the 950 Pro is fast.  Like insanely fast and even 4 x 850 Evo can't write as fast as it can push it to them.  The two other Intel SSDs are just additional operating systems so that I can boot into Windows 7 or 8.1 as needed during benchmarks.  I learned early on that benchmarking and pushing the limits tends to bring on system crashes and corrupt files, so I keep that to separate drives and have never had a problem since.

 

I sent you a PM with a fair amount of OC information.

[Dennis Miller]

3 hours ago, rossta said:

I see you went down the 2 x ssd route. I was torn between single and dual ssd but budget sadly came first! 

One thing I have noted since the build is that the 3200 ram I got potentially only runs at 2400 which is slightly irritating! Apparently it's to do with the mobo, so just goes to show I should have researched more!! 

 

Yeah I'm going with an SSD RAID 0 for my boot drive for now (I have plans to upgrade to an Intel 750 PCIE card next year when they're hopefully not $1k!) and two HDDs that I'll only really use for big data and image backups.  The only thing you have to watch out for when using SATA SSDs in RAID is the DMI bandwidth limitation (which for x99 is 2GB/s I believe) but seeing as how I'll only be using the HDDs occasionally I think I'll be ok until I upgrade.

 

As far as RAM I did spend some time researching this as I've heard of the issues.  In the end I went with this kit from Corsair, CMD32GX4M4B2133C10, it's only 2133 but is does have a nice low CAS latency of 10.  In the end I wasn't too concerned with the speed since I knew I'd be over clocking it anyhow.

[Dennis Miller]

4 hours ago, done12many2 said:

I sent you a PM with a fair amount of OC information.

 

Thanks so much for this.  I've read the Asus guide, and it's a good place to start, but your spreadsheet is great.  Once I get this built it will be awesome to have real-world quantifiable results to compare to.

 

Semper Fi Devil Dog!

[rossta]

So i received the EVGA SLI Bridge (Long = 60mm spacing) today and it fits like a charm.. photos below....

 

hope this info helps someone else in future!

[done12many2]

16 minutes ago, rossta said:

So i received the EVGA SLI Bridge (Long = 60mm spacing) today and it fits like a charm.. photos below....

 

hope this info helps someone else in future!

 

That looks great bud.  As a matter of fact that whole rig looks fantastic.  Nice work!

 

Unfortunately, I don't think that bridge is going to look right with my setup.  I have nickel/plexi EK water blocks with black EK backplates so that nice EVGA bridge might just stand out a bit much.  Looks right at home in your setup though.

[done12many2]

14 hours ago, Dennis Miller said:

 

Thanks so much for this.  I've read the Asus guide, and it's a good place to start, but your spreadsheet is great.  Once I get this built it will be awesome to have real-world quantifiable results to compare to.

 

Semper Fi Devil Dog!

I look forward to hearing about your results.

[rossta]

2 hours ago, done12many2 said:

 

That looks great bud.  As a matter of fact that whole rig looks fantastic.  Nice work!

 

Unfortunately, I don't think that bridge is going to look right with my setup.  I have nickel/plexi EK water blocks with black EK backplates so that nice EVGA bridge might just stand out a bit much.  Looks right at home in your setup though.

I think you can turn off the led through geforce experience if required. Still might be too shiny for you though! To be honest I have no idea why I got the bridge as my case is the 400q so completely enclosed and therefore I never see inside it!! Unfortunately my ocd couldn't cope knowing that the crappy flex bridge was inside!  Lol  

[rossta]

3 hours ago, done12many2 said:

 

That looks great bud.  As a matter of fact that whole rig looks fantastic.  Nice work!

 

Unfortunately, I don't think that bridge is going to look right with my setup.  I have nickel/plexi EK water blocks with black EK backplates so that nice EVGA bridge might just stand out a bit much.  Looks right at home in your setup though.

 

Ps would love to see some pics of your rig to drool over!  

[done12many2]

Just now, rossta said:

I think you can turn off the led through geforce experience if required. Still might be too shiny for you though! To be honest I have no idea why I got the bridge as my case is the 400q so completely enclosed and therefore I never see inside it!! Unfortunately my ocd couldn't cope knowing that the crappy flex bridge was inside!  Lol  

 

That's funny.

 

I have thousands upon thousands invested in my setup and I'm rolling with a $5 ribbon bridge from a R5E because it looked better than the one that came with my board.  Lucky for me, it's black and bows down in between both cards.  My motherboard is mounted horizontally, so it's out of site.  I still wouldn't mind a proper black solid bridge.