Greetings,
I’m still playing around with optimal CUDA box configurations, and have decided that I want all my CUDA cards to have a free spot below them so the intake fan can pull air in better. As such, some nice looking motherboards like the MSI NF980-G65 won’t work, because even in the 2 card mode, it has them in spots 1 and 3, so the first card has no breathing room. You can use 1 and 5, but that reduces the card in 5 to 8x (which may or may not matter.)
I recently found the older Asus M4A79T mobo, reasonably priced at $139 from NewEgg, and gave it a look over. According to the manual, you can configure the PCIe bandwidth in the BIOS, giving you the option to control whether the pairs of slots are x16/x1 or x8/x8. Additionally, one could put in a PCI video card in the 4th slot, leaving plenty of air space for the x16 spots at 1 and 5. This flexability looks useful, and with nothing out there for AMD with 3 spaced out slots, (except the DFI Lan Party mobo, which has TERRIBLE support reviews,) this looks like a nice option for a 2 card x16 mobo.
Does anyone have any experience with the Asus M4A79T mobo for Cuda calcs? And how do you all prioritize card airflow vs. the usefulness of onboard video?
Regards,
Martin
Greetings,
I’m still playing around with optimal CUDA box configurations, and have decided that I want all my CUDA cards to have a free spot below them so the intake fan can pull air in better. As such, some nice looking motherboards like the MSI NF980-G65 won’t work, because even in the 2 card mode, it has them in spots 1 and 3, so the first card has no breathing room. You can use 1 and 5, but that reduces the card in 5 to 8x (which may or may not matter.)
I recently found the older Asus M4A79T mobo, reasonably priced at $139 from NewEgg, and gave it a look over. According to the manual, you can configure the PCIe bandwidth in the BIOS, giving you the option to control whether the pairs of slots are x16/x1 or x8/x8. Additionally, one could put in a PCI video card in the 4th slot, leaving plenty of air space for the x16 spots at 1 and 5. This flexability looks useful, and with nothing out there for AMD with 3 spaced out slots, (except the DFI Lan Party mobo, which has TERRIBLE support reviews,) this looks like a nice option for a 2 card x16 mobo.
Does anyone have any experience with the Asus M4A79T mobo for Cuda calcs? And how do you all prioritize card airflow vs. the usefulness of onboard video?
Regards,
Martin
Since most motherboards which have multiple x16 slots are designed for gamers who will use SLI, they’ll nearly all be spaced like that since the SLI connector requires that spacing.
But you’re right, that M4A79T is a strange exception! It definitely gives you the widely spaced x16 x16 slots. And the flexibility of doing x16 x8 x8 later if you want to.
I’d recommend against a PCI video card though… they’re pretty expensive in practice!
But you can just get a cheap low power, low profile single width display card for the middle PCIe and you should be fine… it’s not going to block airflow too much.
Since most motherboards which have multiple x16 slots are designed for gamers who will use SLI, they’ll nearly all be spaced like that since the SLI connector requires that spacing.
But you’re right, that M4A79T is a strange exception! It definitely gives you the widely spaced x16 x16 slots. And the flexibility of doing x16 x8 x8 later if you want to.
I’d recommend against a PCI video card though… they’re pretty expensive in practice!
But you can just get a cheap low power, low profile single width display card for the middle PCIe and you should be fine… it’s not going to block airflow too much.
I’ve found some old nVidia PCI video cards on eBay that are currently under $10 shipped; there should be a decent supply of them for a while. But most either have a VGA connector, or DVI, but not both, so know what monitor you’re hooking up to before buying. And yes, the NewEgg (and equivalent) PCI cards are pricey.
Regards,
Martin
I’ve found some old nVidia PCI video cards on eBay that are currently under $10 shipped; there should be a decent supply of them for a while. But most either have a VGA connector, or DVI, but not both, so know what monitor you’re hooking up to before buying. And yes, the NewEgg (and equivalent) PCI cards are pricey.
Regards,
Martin