x99 4 way, good clocker but not excessive price?

[tez]

Hi all.

Iv got a 5930x which was my choice because its a 6 core, has 40 lanes which in time I will get 4x GPUs for rendering.

My system is water cooled so need a motherboard thats a X99 lga 2011-v3 , 4 way sli, and is a good overclocker.

I dont want to go Asus, but am open to other brands. The only Asus one iv found that fits my needs is the x99 deluxe, thats way too expensive for me.

I want to pay no more than £280 new, but am looking to go used if possible.

Thanks, Dan

 

[WJA96]

Bear in mind that most 4-way SLi systems don't run x16 on all slots. Some are running x4 which could reduce the overall processing speed.

I have the ASRock x99 WS-E motherboard, which is one of the very few that does run 4 PCIe slots at x16. It's not proved to be a great clocking board though. Mind you, running an E4 2687 and 4 Zotac 980Ti Arctic Storm GPUs it doesn't really need overclocking.

I doubt you'll find anything new within your budget with the extra PLX chips.

 

[guwange]

Despite the number of PCIe slots, I'm pretty sure the X99 Deluxe is only actually capable of 3-way SLI (using dual slot cards). By the looks of it, it would be capable of 4-way/Quadfire if you were say watercooling (and using cards that could be converted with a single slot bracket)...but not otherwise.

WJA96 is right in the sense you definitely won't find anything (at least new) within your budget with a PLX chip. However, while a PLX chip will give you x16 in each slot, it'll also introduce additional latency. I was always under the impression, that any small gains from the extra bandwidth are all but cancelled out by the extra latency - so unless you plan on using an M.2/U.2 on top of your 4-way setup, I don't think it's in any way essential.

Definitely check out the Gigabyte X99 SOC Champion. It lacks some of the fancier extras of the 'refresh' boards - but it's well within budget; probably bested only by the Rampage series in terms of overclocking; and has pretty much the perfect PCIe configuration for 4-way.

The X99-Gaming 5P (which bears quite a few similarities to the Champion) is another option. It has some advantages (better audio, more Dimm slots, generally slightly more feature rich spec). As well as some disadvantages (worse overclocking and memory tuning, Killer NIC).