Slot 1 or slot 3

garethjwilliams · 11 Jun 2015 at 09:25

Hi guys received my evga gtx980TI superclocked graphics card yesterday as I am gonna be putting a waterblock on the gpu, I put the card in to lane 1 and noticed that it's quite close to the cpu waterblock, so what I am asking is can I use lane 3 for the gpu so I got some space for tubing, lane 1 and lane 3 are both x16 so hopefully there will be no issues, much appreciated, Gareth

pastymuncher · 11 Jun 2015 at 09:39

It would help if you told us which board you have. Just because you have a pair of 16x physical slots doesn't mean they run at 16x electrically. Some are as low as 4x.

garethjwilliams · 11 Jun 2015 at 19:44

I have the z97x-gaming g1 wifi bk that's why I bought the MB so I could run 2 cards at x16, well hopefully it has when I read and watched reviews of it, they said it can run 2 cards at x16

pastymuncher · 11 Jun 2015 at 21:06

It uses a PLX chip to give a pair of 16x lanes so yes you can run a pair of cards at 16x although 8x would be more than enough and you wouldn't be sacrificing more than 2-5% performance and have a lot more money to spend on something else. These PLX chips can cause latency issues as well.

As to your original question, the page for your motherboard on Gigabytes website states:-

2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x16 (PCIEX16_1~2)
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16_1 slot; if you are installing two PCI Express graphics cards, it is recommended that you install them in the PCIEX16_1 and PCIEX16_2 slots.