Thanks, I will try both of these suggestions when I get home..

Yea, I'm using 11.5 and 2.4 atm.

So I checked BIOS and there were some USB3 options. Disable controller and ability to choose EHCI or XHCI.  You think either would help? I may try to put the adapters and cards back in if you think it's worth a shot.

I was under the impression that when using the second PCIe x16 slot it would automatically disable USB3/SATA6. I'm pretty sure there isn't an option in BIOS, but I'll check to make sure. You think it could have an effect on the x1 slots?

I finally got most of my desktop to load and fired up Phoenix to see what would happen. The main card will not hash, but the slave card will. This is very strange to me..

Thanks for the help so far.

Windows 7 64
Antec TP Quattro 1200w

Hi guys, new to forums and have a problem I hope you can help with.

I was running 2x 5830's on a P55A-UD4P (Gigabyte) mobo and decided to order 2 more 5830's and couple of 1x > 16x adapters to use the two x1 slots. So everything got here and I tried adding the new cards using dummy plugs - the system would fire up, but could not get a video signal. With 3 cards the same thing happened. So I decided to go back to just 2x cards to see if it would get a signal.. it did, but now everything is really messed up. Everything is very slow to load, anti-virus won't load at all, internet only connects for a second, then stops.. just a big mess really.

Any reason the 1x slots would not handle these cards and any idea why it messed my computer so badly??

I don't know as much about this stuff as you guys do, so any help is appreciated beyond comprehension. 

Thanks!