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Laucien · ‎06-12-2016

I'm planning to buy an "Asus ROG Xonar Phoebus" for my current setup but I'm not sure if it would fit along with my SLI GTX970 >.>.

My current motherboard is an Maximus VII Ranger and I'm using the 2 red PCIe ports for the GPUs. All the other expansion ports are empty.

Here's a link to the motherboard details/specs https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/MAXIMUS_VII_RANGER/ and here are two pics I just took showing the GPUs and the topmost pci-e x1 port http://imgur.com/a/cxMOl.

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.

Nate152 · ‎06-14-2016

Hi Laucien

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.

ROG Strix 1070 OC Guide - ROG Spatha X Rapid Fire - ROG Falchion Touch Panel - z270 BCLK Overclocking - Xsplit Gamecaster Guide - ROG RX 460 OC Guide

Pandur · ‎06-16-2016

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

Nate152 · ‎06-17-2016

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.

Thank you for pointing that out Pandur. 🙂

ROG Strix 1070 OC Guide - ROG Spatha X Rapid Fire - ROG Falchion Touch Panel - z270 BCLK Overclocking - Xsplit Gamecaster Guide - ROG RX 460 OC Guide

Vlada011 · ‎06-17-2016

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.

Would a sound card fit here? - Maximus VII Ranger