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question about mobo/graphics card



 
 
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  #1  
Old May 23rd 19, 09:00 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Yes[_2_]
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Posts: 105
Default question about mobo/graphics card

Considering that some of the graphics cards I've seen pictured these
days use two of the backplate slots to mount the card, have any
motherboard manufacturers started offering mobos that are specifically
desigend to accomodate two such cards.

When I look at those graphics cards, it just seems like they would
cover up so much of the motherboard that even having a lot of PCI-e
slots is wasted and if one had two graphics cards, it'd be even more
so. So I'm wondering if mfrs have begun selling specialized mobos
catering to the crowd that wants to use say one or two graphics cards
and at the trade-off of pci-e slots for other uses. Are there any
buzzwords or special marketing phrases the mfrs use to identify such a
restricted use mobo?

Thanks,

John
  #2  
Old May 23rd 19, 10:38 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
VanguardLH[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,453
Default question about mobo/graphics card

Yes wrote:

Considering that some of the graphics cards I've seen pictured these
days use two of the backplate slots to mount the card, have any
motherboard manufacturers started offering mobos that are specifically
desigend to accomodate two such cards.

When I look at those graphics cards, it just seems like they would
cover up so much of the motherboard that even having a lot of PCI-e
slots is wasted and if one had two graphics cards, it'd be even more
so. So I'm wondering if mfrs have begun selling specialized mobos
catering to the crowd that wants to use say one or two graphics cards
and at the trade-off of pci-e slots for other uses. Are there any
buzzwords or special marketing phrases the mfrs use to identify such a
restricted use mobo?

Thanks,

John


Look at a pic of the mobo in which you are interested. You can see if
the PCI-e slots have been moved apart farther; i.e., there are no slots
between the PCI-e 16x slots (there might be a PCI-e 1x slot which means
you lose it when installing a double-wide video card).

I got the Asrock Z390 Taichi mobo. You can see a pic of it at:

http://static.techspot.com/images/pr...17-product.png

The top PCI-e 16x slot is for the [primary] video card. Notice the is a
PCI-e 1x slot just above it. That will be available when you insert a
single- or double-wide video card. The next typical slot would be down
from the long slot but there isn't one on this mobo (that's where you
see what looks like rivet heads). The PCI-e 1x slot below there is far
enough down that it won't get blocked by a double-wide video card.
However, if you install a card in that PCI-e 1x slot, you end up
blocking airflow for the video card's cooling fan. That card would be
only a few millimeters away from the double-wide video card which isn't
far enough away to let air flow around the card even if it were a
low-height card.

https://www.asrock.com/mb/features/Z...20Ultimate.jpg

That's another pic of that mobo. #9 is where is the PCI-e 1x slot and
also the onboard M.2 NVMe socket for an SSD drive (as a PCB, not as a
2.5" or 3.5" case). #8 is the primary video slot. Below that is
another M.2 NVMe socket for another SSD drive. The M.2 drives sit
against the mobo and are lower than the height of the PCI-e socket, so
they don't interfere with daughtercards. Below that is another PCI-e
slot; however, with a double-wide video card in #8, its fan enclosure
will be very close to that PCI-e 1x slot.

I forget if the video card sucks in its side and blows out its
backplate, or the other way around. I could test but it's not important
to me right now. If I were to add a daughtercard into the PCI-e 1x slot
(just below the #8 slot), I'd add a case fan in the side panel to make
sure air got blown down between the PCI-e 1x card and the double-wide
video card, but that would only work if the video card sucked in from
its side and blew out its backplate. Alternatively, I'd check if the
HDDs in the low-end drive cage were out of the way to let the front case
fans blow across and into the small gap between the PCI-e 1x slot and
its card and the very nearby double-wide video card.

If I add a daughtercard what will use a PCI-e 1x slot, I'd first use the
one above #8 with the video card. I haven't even checking how to use
dual double-wide video cards with this mobo. The cost for such a setup
would achieve miniscule gain. I also don't overclock or use liquid
cooling (which has been proven to offer no advantage of proper fan
cooling but might be quieter but still needs fans on the radiator;
however, my fanned setup is so quiet that I'm still getting used to the
silence).

My choice is just one example. That mobo supports only 8th and 9th gen
Intel i7 CPUs and Asrock only supports Windows 10 for that mobo. You
asked if there were any. Here's one. I'm sure if you hunt around using
your own criteria as to what you want for features in a mobo that you'd
find many other candidates.
  #3  
Old May 24th 19, 12:22 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Paul[_28_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,467
Default question about mobo/graphics card

Yes wrote:
Considering that some of the graphics cards I've seen pictured these
days use two of the backplate slots to mount the card, have any
motherboard manufacturers started offering mobos that are specifically
desigend to accomodate two such cards.

When I look at those graphics cards, it just seems like they would
cover up so much of the motherboard that even having a lot of PCI-e
slots is wasted and if one had two graphics cards, it'd be even more
so. So I'm wondering if mfrs have begun selling specialized mobos
catering to the crowd that wants to use say one or two graphics cards
and at the trade-off of pci-e slots for other uses. Are there any
buzzwords or special marketing phrases the mfrs use to identify such a
restricted use mobo?

Thanks,

John


Various platforms have different wiring patterns for slots.

Even if all the motherboard slots look like PCIe x16,
they can be wired x1, x4, x8, x16. Some users are
not overjoyed to find their "SLI lookin" motherboard,
has x16 for the video slot nearest the processor and
x4 for the second large PCI Express slot. Even though
both connectors are the same size, they don't have
identical wiring. A PCIe slot can work if wires are
missing (this even helps if there is a lane failure
and you don't even know it has happened).

An LGA1151 would be x16 and x4.

An LGA2011 would have a total of 28 to 44 lanes
with the possibility of more (real) x16 slots.

So while you can admire pictures of products, you
really need to download the user manual and find
the "plain truth" chapter that gives all the population
rules. It will tell you how the slots are wired, and
what slimy thing they did to save a buck or two.

Excess slots today are replaced with NVMe, as Vanguard mentions.
And there are also interactions between those slots and
maybe one or two of the SATA connectors or Express connectors.

The end result, is a small nightmare in the manual, as you figure
out whether the motherboard is a "good deal" or not. For example,
if you put a 28 lane LGA2011 processor in a motherboard, chances
are good one PCIe x16 doesn't work at all (no wires fed by the
processor).

While I think NVMe are "cool" to have, I'm not willing
to compromise my setups on half-assed slot configurations.
YMMV of course. Gimme seven slots and let me choose what
to stick in them. Just about every computer I've ever
had, has been full of cards, because I like "addons" as
new stuff shows up. The latest card being an USB3.1 Rev2
card for an older computer. In addition to the
USB3.0 card it had as well. If a fun toy is available
for the right price, I'm not adverse to building up
my junk room contents.

Just for the record, SLI or Crossfire aren't the best deal
in the world. They don't exactly double performance, and
some titles perform relatively poorly that way. Perhaps
a time you might need something like that, is if you
had a VR headset and it needed "mighty horsepower" to work.
But for gaming, you should be able to snag a single card
with sufficient horsepower for a decent gaming session.
Buying a couple 7300LE and slapping that SLI ribbon
on them, is delusional :-/ Either you have the money
to game properly... or you don't. Buying a couple
7300LE doesn't make you a gamer. You'll only get an
extra 3FPS in the SIMS doing that.

Having said that, you can imagine what my opinion is
of builds with three or four massive video cards installed.
That's OK if you're cracking passwords or mining Ethereum
or something, but that's a giant waste for gaming. People
who have that kind of money to spend, do benchmarks
all day long.

Paul
  #4  
Old May 24th 19, 02:57 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,407
Default question about mobo/graphics card

On Thu, 23 May 2019 20:00:04 -0000 (UTC), "Yes"
wrote:

So I'm wondering if mfrs have begun selling specialized mobos
catering to the crowd that wants to use say one or two graphics cards
and at the trade-off of pci-e slots for other uses. Are there any
buzzwords or special marketing phrases


Games is the buzzword. So you look, resultingly, for a gaming case.

Gaming means no expense is spared, and that's what they have to
accomplish in order to sell a $200-500 case.

Any MB, anytime. Bring it on. We play, that's the plan and just what
we do.

The computer is an extension: It must be uncompromising to win.

The nicest part is to suppose that $500 case is an adjusted cost for
an eighth of what each $2000 videoboard costs to pair them.

How could anybody but a chump not put the neon lights underneath a car
he lives paycheck to paycheck for.
  #5  
Old May 24th 19, 06:52 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Yes[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 105
Default question about mobo/graphics card

VanguardLH wrote:

Yes wrote:

Considering that some of the graphics cards I've seen pictured these
days use two of the backplate slots to mount the card, have any
motherboard manufacturers started offering mobos that are
specifically desigend to accomodate two such cards.

When I look at those graphics cards, it just seems like they would
cover up so much of the motherboard that even having a lot of PCI-e
slots is wasted and if one had two graphics cards, it'd be even more
so. So I'm wondering if mfrs have begun selling specialized mobos
catering to the crowd that wants to use say one or two graphics
cards and at the trade-off of pci-e slots for other uses. Are
there any buzzwords or special marketing phrases the mfrs use to
identify such a restricted use mobo?

Thanks,

John


Look at a pic of the mobo in which you are interested. You can see if
the PCI-e slots have been moved apart farther; i.e., there are no
slots between the PCI-e 16x slots (there might be a PCI-e 1x slot
which means you lose it when installing a double-wide video card).

I got the Asrock Z390 Taichi mobo. You can see a pic of it at:


http://static.techspot.com/images/pr...17-product.png

The top PCI-e 16x slot is for the [primary] video card. Notice the
is a PCI-e 1x slot just above it. That will be available when you
insert a single- or double-wide video card. The next typical slot
would be down from the long slot but there isn't one on this mobo
(that's where you see what looks like rivet heads). The PCI-e 1x
slot below there is far enough down that it won't get blocked by a
double-wide video card. However, if you install a card in that PCI-e
1x slot, you end up blocking airflow for the video card's cooling
fan. That card would be only a few millimeters away from the
double-wide video card which isn't far enough away to let air flow
around the card even if it were a low-height card.

https://www.asrock.com/mb/features/Z...20Ultimate.jpg

That's another pic of that mobo. #9 is where is the PCI-e 1x slot and
also the onboard M.2 NVMe socket for an SSD drive (as a PCB, not as a
2.5" or 3.5" case). #8 is the primary video slot. Below that is
another M.2 NVMe socket for another SSD drive. The M.2 drives sit
against the mobo and are lower than the height of the PCI-e socket, so
they don't interfere with daughtercards. Below that is another PCI-e
slot; however, with a double-wide video card in #8, its fan enclosure
will be very close to that PCI-e 1x slot.

I forget if the video card sucks in its side and blows out its
backplate, or the other way around. I could test but it's not
important to me right now. If I were to add a daughtercard into the
PCI-e 1x slot (just below the #8 slot), I'd add a case fan in the
side panel to make sure air got blown down between the PCI-e 1x card
and the double-wide video card, but that would only work if the video
card sucked in from its side and blew out its backplate.
Alternatively, I'd check if the HDDs in the low-end drive cage were
out of the way to let the front case fans blow across and into the
small gap between the PCI-e 1x slot and its card and the very nearby
double-wide video card.

If I add a daughtercard what will use a PCI-e 1x slot, I'd first use
the one above #8 with the video card. I haven't even checking how to
use dual double-wide video cards with this mobo. The cost for such a
setup would achieve miniscule gain. I also don't overclock or use
liquid cooling (which has been proven to offer no advantage of proper
fan cooling but might be quieter but still needs fans on the radiator;
however, my fanned setup is so quiet that I'm still getting used to
the silence).

My choice is just one example. That mobo supports only 8th and 9th
gen Intel i7 CPUs and Asrock only supports Windows 10 for that mobo.
You asked if there were any. Here's one. I'm sure if you hunt
around using your own criteria as to what you want for features in a
mobo that you'd find many other candidates.


Thank you. I don't keep up with that aspect of tech very often. I
upgrade my mobo and eqpt infrequently. What I've got now works fine
for my needs, but it's not particularly suited for the newer tech.

John
  #6  
Old May 24th 19, 07:02 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Yes[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 105
Default question about mobo/graphics card

Paul wrote:

Yes wrote:
Considering that some of the graphics cards I've seen pictured these
days use two of the backplate slots to mount the card, have any
motherboard manufacturers started offering mobos that are
specifically desigend to accomodate two such cards.

When I look at those graphics cards, it just seems like they would
cover up so much of the motherboard that even having a lot of PCI-e
slots is wasted and if one had two graphics cards, it'd be even more
so. So I'm wondering if mfrs have begun selling specialized mobos
catering to the crowd that wants to use say one or two graphics
cards and at the trade-off of pci-e slots for other uses. Are
there any buzzwords or special marketing phrases the mfrs use to
identify such a restricted use mobo?

Thanks,

John


Various platforms have different wiring patterns for slots.

Even if all the motherboard slots look like PCIe x16,
they can be wired x1, x4, x8, x16. Some users are
not overjoyed to find their "SLI lookin" motherboard,
has x16 for the video slot nearest the processor and
x4 for the second large PCI Express slot. Even though
both connectors are the same size, they don't have
identical wiring. A PCIe slot can work if wires are
missing (this even helps if there is a lane failure
and you don't even know it has happened).

An LGA1151 would be x16 and x4.

An LGA2011 would have a total of 28 to 44 lanes
with the possibility of more (real) x16 slots.

So while you can admire pictures of products, you
really need to download the user manual and find
the "plain truth" chapter that gives all the population
rules. It will tell you how the slots are wired, and
what slimy thing they did to save a buck or two.

Excess slots today are replaced with NVMe, as Vanguard mentions.
And there are also interactions between those slots and
maybe one or two of the SATA connectors or Express connectors.

The end result, is a small nightmare in the manual, as you figure
out whether the motherboard is a "good deal" or not. For example,
if you put a 28 lane LGA2011 processor in a motherboard, chances
are good one PCIe x16 doesn't work at all (no wires fed by the
processor).

While I think NVMe are "cool" to have, I'm not willing
to compromise my setups on half-assed slot configurations.
YMMV of course. Gimme seven slots and let me choose what
to stick in them. Just about every computer I've ever
had, has been full of cards, because I like "addons" as
new stuff shows up. The latest card being an USB3.1 Rev2
card for an older computer. In addition to the
USB3.0 card it had as well. If a fun toy is available
for the right price, I'm not adverse to building up
my junk room contents.

Just for the record, SLI or Crossfire aren't the best deal
in the world. They don't exactly double performance, and
some titles perform relatively poorly that way. Perhaps
a time you might need something like that, is if you
had a VR headset and it needed "mighty horsepower" to work.
But for gaming, you should be able to snag a single card
with sufficient horsepower for a decent gaming session.
Buying a couple 7300LE and slapping that SLI ribbon
on them, is delusional :-/ Either you have the money
to game properly... or you don't. Buying a couple
7300LE doesn't make you a gamer. You'll only get an
extra 3FPS in the SIMS doing that.

Having said that, you can imagine what my opinion is
of builds with three or four massive video cards installed.
That's OK if you're cracking passwords or mining Ethereum
or something, but that's a giant waste for gaming. People
who have that kind of money to spend, do benchmarks
all day long.

Paul


Thank you. My existing system works very well for my needs. A new
graphics card sounds tempting at times, but the price (and I suspect
the h/w requirements) of the cutting edge graphics cards are way to
rich for what I do. If I do upgrade my mobo, it would be not so much
for a graphics card but something related to faster data transfer
speeds to storage devices or communications like wi-fi or bluetooth
capability.

John
  #7  
Old May 24th 19, 07:06 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Yes[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 105
Default question about mobo/graphics card

Flasherly wrote:

On Thu, 23 May 2019 20:00:04 -0000 (UTC), "Yes"
wrote:

So I'm wondering if mfrs have begun selling specialized mobos
catering to the crowd that wants to use say one or two graphics
cards and at the trade-off of pci-e slots for other uses. Are
there any buzzwords or special marketing phrases


Games is the buzzword. So you look, resultingly, for a gaming case.

Gaming means no expense is spared, and that's what they have to
accomplish in order to sell a $200-500 case.

Any MB, anytime. Bring it on. We play, that's the plan and just what
we do.

The computer is an extension: It must be uncompromising to win.

The nicest part is to suppose that $500 case is an adjusted cost for
an eighth of what each $2000 videoboard costs to pair them.

How could anybody but a chump not put the neon lights underneath a car
he lives paycheck to paycheck for.


Ha ha. I do remember back in the 80s when the neon lights ( cars)
were just becoming popular. They did look cool. Nowadays, with as
much light as there is out there, the impact of the neon lights get
washed out competing with all the other lights in the city.

John
  #8  
Old May 24th 19, 09:19 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,407
Default question about mobo/graphics card

On Fri, 24 May 2019 18:06:26 -0000 (UTC), "Yes"
wrote:

Ha ha. I do remember back in the 80s when the neon lights ( cars)
were just becoming popular. They did look cool. Nowadays, with as
much light as there is out there, the impact of the neon lights get
washed out competing with all the other lights in the city.


I also wanted the graphics card upgrade, thinking, at the time,
advancements for that provision in MB technology an optimistic bet.
But the costs, at what I'd imagined surely over time by then a value,
were not especially a benefit over video-chipped motherboards I've
been running since, near the same time, first PCI-E slots became
available for better graphic boards.

My price expectations ended up being neither a realistic one for a
value or appreciable performance. Something, though, I already knew,
that they neither could be, any more so, had I found a theoretical
better value on a better board: I'm not enough of a gamer, so there's
really no bottlenecks involved with thruput for more common uses, such
as occasional light-weight games or a video renderer for encoded films
off that videochip soldered onto a MB.

Something for nothing can indeed sometimes work, just not all the
time.
 




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