Is it possible to safley remove a port from my graphics card?

[CraigRobbo]

Hey guys.

I want to get a 3rd GTX660 into my system, but the case only has 7 PCI slots but there is space in the case to fit the card.

I am wondering if I modify the video cards back plate to just a single PCI slot, Could I remove one of the DVI heads safely? and if so is there a good way to go about it?

I am in effect trying to convert a double slot card into a single slot card.

Thanks

Craig

 

[Orcvader]

Will you be running them in SLi? Since the GTX 660 does not support 3 way SLi, only the 660 Ti, 670 and 680 of the 600 series supports this feature.

 

[CraigRobbo]

Hi,
No I won't be using all 3 in SLI I an using 2 in SLI and one single for my config.

 

[Orcvader]

What will the third 660 be used for then? I doubt it would give any benefits if it was used for something like a dedicated PhysX card.

It will be possible to turn the backplate into a single slot one, and cutting off the top DVI port should be fine.

 

[CraigRobbo]

Hi, thanks for that.

It will be user as a physx card, after running a series of tests I found it was helpful in games that take use of a dedicated card, in metro using a dedicated card saw me almost 10fps boost which is impressive, thats when maxed out on settings, it was the difference between using aa x3 or non at all.

I was hoping I would take the connector off in a less destructive way than cutting it off, is there a way to unclip it or something?

 

[Orcvader]

Well the 660 seems a bit much for PhysX... but I'm not knowledgeable on this topic...

Well, I didn't litterally mean cutting it off, I meant the card should still be fine when you "disable" it. There's a thread here of someone doing something similiar: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1636721

 

[Silent_Scone]

You'd be surprised Orcvader. Although using one outside of SLi is still a bit wasteful IMO , performance still scales noticeably with faster GPUs with PhysX.