ASRock X79 Extreme9 Motherboard
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The ASRock X79 Extreme9 comes with five PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots and one PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot. Socket LGA2011 processors have a total of 40 PCI Express 3.0 lanes for video cards. This allows a very high-end configuration for the PCI Express x16 slots, but the exact configuration used will depend on the motherboard model.
The ASRock X79 Extreme9 allows two configurations for its PCI Express x16 slots: x16/x0/x16/x0/x8, if up to three video cards are installed, or all slots running at x8, if four or five video cards are installed.
If you are going to install only two video cards, install the second video card in the third PCI Express x16 slot (labeled “PCIE4”), and not in the second one, in order for you to achieve the best performance.
When installing dual-slot video cards, you “kill” the slot immediately to the left (looking at the motherboard with its rear connectors facing up) of the slot being used. This means that you can only install three dual-slot video cards with this motherboard, and you will need a case with at least eight expansion slots to be able to install the third video card.
All PCI Express x16 slots support both SLI and CrossFireX technologies.
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