The issue I am facing is that the 980 card does not fit in the PCIE_16x_1 slot due to the back plate touching the motherboard cooler.

Is it just touching or with interference?; are you speaking of the ROG logo cover or the I/O aluminum cover?
If it is just touching with little or no pressure I would not worry about it; ran tri-sli for 30 minutes 🙂 with the backplate touching the I/O cover and no detrimental effects.
If there is a little too much pressure and it is the I/O cover I would dremel off a wee bit of aluminum cover very carefully :); then polish it up a bit to make it look as pretty as possible.
Lay one static free cover over all of the board. Lay down a separate cover fitted around the grinding area of the board on top of the other, making sure all is desert dry etc, remove carefully when finished and blow off the upside down board with air. It will not show that much; it is just that protruding corner of the I/O cover requires a little rounding off; for me anyways.

Is there any way to reconfigure the PCIE_8x_2 as 16x in BIOS by disabling the first slot (PCIE_16x_1)?

Not that I'm aware of, hardwired in the board I believe.

PS: perhaps a reminder note to the design team or whoever; shaving a bit off of the corner of the I/O cover would be very helpful. 🙂

odysseas.nemo wrote:
Hi all,

I am moving to an 2 way SLI 980 (Asus Strix cards), using EK water blocks with back plate to cool the cards.

The issue I am facing is that the 980 card does not fit in the PCIE_16x_1 slot due to the back plate touching the motherboard cooler.
Is there any way to reconfigure the PCIE_8x_2 as 16x in BIOS by disabling the first slot (PCIE_16x_1)?

Just for reference I am having the 5690x.

Thanks!

Which blocks are you planning to buy? Have a link?

Thank you for your replies !

The back plate I have is from EKWB for 980 STRIX:
http://www.ekwb.com/shop/blocks/vga-blocks/fc-backplates/nvidia-geforce-series/ek-fc980-gtx-strix-ba...

Fiddling a bit more, and I can say that the backplate does not allow me to install the card in the first slot at all.
I think at the moment I will go for a combo of 8x and 16x, as was suggested, using the 2nd and 3rd slots, perhaps later on I will mod the motherboard. I have to admit that the heatsink and the ROG cover gave me quite some trouble with my build. It makes it very difficult to access the first PCIe slot, especially the release mechanism.

Hi,

the simple way is to remove the backplate. Use only the watercooler at the front. The backplate doesnt help nothing in case of cooling performance in real, its only relevant for "design aspects".