Is this set up possible?

[bigchen888]

Hello everybody I'm new here after discovering linus on youtube. Recently I'm doing some upgrades on my 5 year old gaming computer. Here's what I got

 

Asus P8Z77-V Z77

i5 3570K

GTX 1070

3 x 1920x1200 monitors and 1x 4K TV connected to this

 

The videocard is not strong enough to handle my gaming requirements. I'm very confused on the PCI-e lanes issues. I want to buy another GTX 1070 for SLi and also get a PCI-e AIC SSD, so my question is: with this motherboard and CPU, do i have enough lanes to run SLi + pci-e SSD? I can't seem to figure this out. Please help thanks Linus =D

[Electronics Wizardy]

The gpu's will work fine, but you don't have a slot for a pcie gpu. You would need to use a sata ssd.

 

Both gpu's will get pcie 8x from the cpu and everything else will use pcie from the chipset.

[airdeano]

welcome to the Linus Tech Tips forums!

 

you can run the 2x GPU in SLI (x8/x8), but due to the CPU platform (16 PCIe lanes), running x16 single, x8/x8 dual GPU, but populating the last x16 slot moves the lane assignments to x8/x4/x4. similar happens on the next gen z87/z97 platform.

to do what you are looking to do, you'll have to start with the current CPU platform or the X99 platform.

[bigchen888]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

The gpu's will work fine, but you don't have a slot for a pcie gpu. You would need to use a sata ssd.

 

Both gpu's will get pcie 8x from the cpu and everything else will use pcie from the chipset.

I have these two shorter PCIe slots, aren't these the ones you plus PCIe SSDs into? So you are saying CPU runs two 8x GPUs and the motherboard will run other PCIe together?

[bigchen888]

2 minutes ago, airdeano said:

welcome to the Linus Tech Tips forums!

 

you can run the 2x GPU in SLI (x8/x8), but due to the CPU platform (16 PCIe lanes), running x16 single, x8/x8 dual GPU, but populating the last x16 slot moves the lane assignments to x8/x4/x4. similar happens on the next gen z87/z97 platform.

to do what you are looking to do, you'll have to start with the current CPU platform or the X99 platform.

ah ok thanks. so im going to get the gpu on SLi then. what do you recommend is the fastest type of SSD I can buy that's not going to interfere with PCIe lanes?

[airdeano]

you'll have to consider the SATA versions. none of the PCIe versions will work with your needs.

[bigchen888]

3 minutes ago, airdeano said:

you'll have to consider the SATA versions. none of the PCIe versions will work with your needs.

k thanks. that's so weird how the motherboard has a bunch of slots but then they can't really work together =(

[SpaceGhostC2C]

17 minutes ago, bigchen888 said:

k thanks. that's so weird how the motherboard has a bunch of slots but then they can't really work together =(

They can, they just can't in the way you intend. You could have several ssds in pcie adapters running at 4x, or a crossfirex setup with up to three GPUs. There are many ways in which those slots can be useful. It's only that particular setup that won't work. 

[Gonio]

What the others say.

 

But with a 4k screen if you also game on it, you might be better off with an 1080. Even though 1070 SLI has better performance potential it is so depending on game implementation you might have a less smooth experience even while the fps is higher. Or if you can wait for it an 1080Ti but currently unkwown when it would be released.

 

Doing this would also solve your PCI trouble, allthough for normal daily use would not see a real point for going to the PCIe SSD. They perform significant faster, but it also has to be supported for full potential (NVME) and the real benefit is is for certain workloads. If you have those fine, but if you don't you won't really notice the difference in the way like moving from HDD to SSD experience was.

[thanjon]

That cpu will bottleneck depending on the clock speed you have it set at. What is it now?

[bigchen888]

Thanks guys. I'll stick with SATA