ASRock X79 Fatal1ty Professional Motherboard

Slots

The ASRock X79 Fatal1ty Professional comes with four PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, one PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot and two standard PCI slots. 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 Fatal1ty Professional allows two configurations for its PCI Express x16 slots: x16/x8/x16/x0, if up to three video cards are installed, or x16/x8/x8/x8, if four 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 motherboard allows you to install four dual-slot video cards, which is great. If a fourth dual-slot video is installed, you will need a case with at least eight expansion slots.

All PCI Express x16 slots support both SLI and CrossFireX technologies.

Figure 2: Slots