I'm planning on building a 3x7970 mining rig using either the ASUS F2A85-V Pro motherboard or the ASUS M5A99X Evo R2.0. Does anybody have experience using these boards with all three x16 slots populated with 7970's without using risers? My plan is to remove the side panels from the case to improve cooling with a walmart boxfan

It looks like the ASUS F2A85-V Pro has explicit support for tripple GPU configurations, but will the onboard video complicate things? I should note that I will be using Linux on this system and not windows.

I want to buy one of the Lancelot FPGA development boards. Are they still being sold?

My intention is to experiment with the FPGA board. When I'm not learning how to write code and flash firmware, and when I'm sleeping the board can pay for itself by mining bitcoins.

I know ASIC's are right around the corner, but I can always buy some of those too.