X99S GAMING 9 AC - 3-WAY SLI BRIDGE...?

[The_Asgard_Thor]

Hello everyone,
I got this mainboard and installed 3 titan cards in the pci slots 1, 2 & 4... To get this to work in sli, I use my old asus 3-way sli bridge with 6 connection points. This is not the best solution since its running on 8x-8x-8x on the pci buss... Iwe asked msi for help because in the manual it says I can run 16x-16x-8x if i put the 3 titans in slot 1, 4 & 5... Now they have sent me 4 "single wide-sli" bridges that I can put on... Since I use 3 cards will only be needing 3 of these bridges... But can anyone please post an image how to do this...? Iwe had several mainboards before, and the sli bridges for 3 and 4-way sli has allways been bundled with the mainboard. I remember my evga x58 mainboard had 2 different 3-way "doube wide-sli" bridges and 1 4-way bridge included for different innstallations of the graphic cards...

If you see on page 12 in this evga document, the sli bridges i thought was bundled with the msi mainboard are shown, and the long 3-way bridge looks like the one I thought msi was going to send me: Ok, link did not work...
Try google 141-bl-e759.pdf

 

[blade52x]

XPOWER is the same way apparently, and I'm also running 3x Titans. It was just a stupid design choice (especially for watercooling since all my connectors are made for 2 slot spacing) for what has otherwise been an awesome board. It doesn't even make sense to me as slots 1 and 4 are both 16x electrical so I was asking if a bios update could fix it as I'm not seeing why 16x/8x/16x is not possible. And if only they had added a PLX chip on a $400 motherboard, this wouldn't be an issue. I think these boards got rushed out.

So now off to a WS-E I go. I hope it overclocks and is as rock solid stable as this XPOWER has been. Will be keeping my XPOWER to the side just in case.

 

[badboy2k]

what CPU do you have? is it a 5820K, 5830K or 5860K! if its the first one thats a 28Lane only (Limited to x8,x8,x8 only as that's 24 lanes used) chip and the others are 40 lane ones!

also what else is in your computer? >>Posting Guide<<

Note 4+ lanes are set aside for other things like M.2 ect!

 

[PirateDog]

Note 4+ lanes are set aside for other things like M.2 ect!

M.2 works off the chipset 8 available lanes and are PCI-E 2.0.

 

[The_Asgard_Thor]

what CPU do you have? is it a 5820K, 5830K or 5860K! if its the first one thats a 28Lane only (Limited to x8,x8,x8 only as that's 24 lanes used) chip and the others are 40 lane ones!

also what else is in your computer? >>Posting Guide<<

Note 4+ lanes are set aside for other things like M.2 ect!

I got the 5830K 40 Lanes...

 

[badboy2k]

ok for connecting 3 bridges here is a image!

 

[The_Asgard_Thor]

ok for connecting 3 bridges here is a image!

Yes, nice... Iwe seen a similar image before... But I thought mabye it was another way to do it.... I got now as told before 4 sli bridges recieved from msi, and they are identical long, and it reaches from slot 1 to 5, but they are all to short to make the crossing connection between card in slot one (plugg 2) and down to card in slot 5 (plugg 1)... Should I use some force and press it on...?

EDIT:
The solution is possible if I put the cards in slot 1, 2 and 4... Not 1, 4 and 5...

 

[badboy2k]

depends really if your willing to attempt to do that! it just depends if it will get there without breaking the bridge!

 

[The_Asgard_Thor]

depends really if your willing to attempt to do that! it just depends if it will get there without breaking the bridge!

Yes, It works, and it works well... But, there is a big but: The bridge between card 1 and card 3 is now in very tensile... If I touch it, it sounds like a high tone guitar string... I do not know what happends if this gets hot, mabye break itself...

I highly recommend msi to develop a longer bridge...!

Results:
8x8x8x  =  9472 in 3DMark
16x16x8 = 10225 in 3DMark

So yes there is a difference if any one wonder...

 

[crf44454]

Yes, It works, and it works well... But, there is a big but: The bridge between card 1 and card 3 is now in very tensile... If I touch it, it sounds like a high tone guitar string... I do not know what happends if this gets hot, mabye break itself...

I highly recommend msi to develop a longer bridge...!

Results:
8x8x8x  =  9472 in 3DMark
16x16x8 = 10225 in 3DMark

So yes there is a difference if any one wonder...

Thor, I am setting up a 980 3 way SLI with the 5930k...do you managed to get the cards working at slots PCIE 1,4 e 5 at full speed (16x,16x,8x) with the crossed bridge? It reaches slot 1 to slot 5 crossing? Is that it?

Or you get full pcie speeds with slots 1,2 and 4? What solved the problem? Can you post an image of the cards in the slots?

Thanks!

 

[The_Asgard_Thor]

Thor, I am setting up a 980 3 way SLI with the 5930k...do you managed to get the cards working at slots PCIE 1,4 e 5 at full speed (16x,16x,8x) with the crossed bridge? It reaches slot 1 to slot 5 crossing? Is that it?

Or you get full pcie speeds with slots 1,2 and 4? What solved the problem? Can you post an image of the cards in the slots?

Thanks!

Hi jpouza, Im not allowed to post a link to an image of my sli bridges on this forum, but I can describe it:
Im using 3 sli bridges from msi that is 13.8cm long each...
I have the cards in slot 1, 4 and 5, this is running at 16x16x8x... This is the best as you know (40Lanes)...
I have tried before 1,2 and 4 @ 8x8x8x, and this gives a lower result in benchmarks...

One display card have 2 plugs, lets call them 1 and 2 (counting from the left to the right)... The " " sign represents the pci slots:

First:    Connect one bridge between display card "1" plug 1 and display card "4" plug 1...
Second: Connect one bridge between display card "4" plug 2 and display card "5" plug 2...
Last:      Connect one bridge between display card "5" plug 1 and display card "1" plug 2...
This last bridge is a little tricky because its in my opinion just a little to short, but you can put it on carefully...

The Blue image earlier in this post shows the 8x8x8x setup, since the distance between the cards are equal...
In the 16x16x8x the connections are the same, but you need longer sli bridges because you use pci slot 1, 4 & 5...

Hope this helps you...

 

[crf44454]

Thanks. That helps.
Too bad MSI didn't put a proper 3way bridge on the package, very bad.
I am using a common 3way sli bridge and slots 1, 2 and 4 for my 3x980, but I have also a 750Ti for Physics and mining, so I get 3x slot with 8x and 1 slot with 16x, getting all 40 lanes of my 5930k@4.8GHz.
Also I didn?t notice performance decrease, I get 28.000 points in 3DMark FireStrike, I am number one of world with similar setup, but slots 1,4 and 5 do have better cooling for my 980s, that a huge loss for me, since I will have to block them and put into water cooling.
I?ve noticed MSI x99s Gaming 9 ac can?t pass 2666MHz with my GSkill DDR4 2400 modules, XMP enabled, but thats OK.
Other thing is the NB, cant get it above 3GHz, but thats Ok too...
The boot is also quite slow on this mobo, very strange, running last BIOS here.