1155 Motherboard with 3x SLI and a PCI-E soundcard slot?

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15 Aug 2011
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Hi all,
I currently face a bit of a dilemma in that i will soon have a 3x SLI setup and a Xonar Essence STX which i absolutely love.
Ideally i'd like a motherboard that supports 3x SLI and has a 1x slot still available for the soundcard.
I'm a big fan of ASUS boards but i'm not particularly loyal to a manufacturer.
Ideally, i'd like a Z68 board and have been looking at the Maximus IV extreme which also has the benefit of running the cards in 16x/16x/8x (i know it doesn't make a real difference, but when you've got the choice you always try and aim for the best). Unfortunately, that board's 1x slot would be covered by graphics card so i was wondering if i could buy a cheapo 1x Riser ribbon cable from a certain auction site, angle it at 90 degrees and essentially liberate the 1x slot from it's dual core graphics card oppressor.

Any suggestions?
 
Does look quite nice. Looks like the very top 16x slot would be free too. I wonder if populating it would make the 3x SLI setup run at 8x 8x 8x as opposed to 16x 8x 8x. Not that it really matters.
 
Looking at the specs it says 16x/8x/8x for three cards. No doubt if you used a soundcard in a pci-e slot it would indeed drop to 8x/8x/8x though, not that it would make much difference. You would only be losing 2-3% performance.
 
Does look quite nice. Looks like the very top 16x slot would be free too. I wonder if populating it would make the 3x SLI setup run at 8x 8x 8x as opposed to 16x 8x 8x. Not that it really matters.

According to Specs on Asrock site it will run 16/x8/x8/x4
 
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