I'm wondering if the soundcard would fit in the top most PCIe x1 port (above the GPU) or if I can use the PCIe x4 at the bottom (bellow both GPUs and right above the PSU) to connect the soundcard.
On the maximus vii ranger with 2 gpu's you use all 16 lanes so there is nothing left for a sound card, you'd be better off just using the onboard sound.
For once Nate is wrong. The Z97 motherboards have PCIe lanes from the chipset as well as the cpu. And you can indeed use either the x4 or topmost x1 slot for a soundcard with SLi enabled. Check this sticky post for a list of how the lanes are split on your board.
Asus ROG G55VW: CPU: i7 3630QM GFX: Geforce GTX660M with 2GB ram RAM: 2x8Gb 2133MHz Kingston HyperX Impact (surprisingly the G55VW uses the 2133 X.M.P. profile) Storage: RAID0 with 2x 256Gb Crucial SSDs (both msata, one in a sata adapter) OS: Windows 10 x64
Hi Pandur, you are correct and thank you for correcting me.
The Maximus vii formula has a total of 7 pcie slots (3 pcie x16 slots and 4 pcie x1 slots). With the pcie x16 slots it supports x16 for a single card, x8 x8 for two cards and x8 x8 x4 with 3 cards so yes it will work in the 3rd pcie x16 slot.
Yes that small slots are usually connected with chipsets. Because of that I insist on small slots.
Z170 chipset is better than Z97, X99, etc... I mean best option is X99 with 40 lanes CPU. When Skylake Extreme show up we will get 14nm, 6 cores, 20 lanes from PCH, 48 from CPU and people will have more options.