Um. I use 12.1 driver and my 2.1 SDK works just fine.

2.4, 2.5, and 2.6 all share the same install path. 2.1 is entirely seperate.

Move the files that are in SysWOW64 folder into System32 folder.

If you want to convert a 16x riser into a 1x riser, yes you could convert it by cutting wires. Also make sure your motherboard plays nice.. some boards require pin shorting to be able to use a 1x riser in certain slots (i had to sometimes short presence detect on 1x slots and 16x slots of various boards)

huge migraine right now will try to help later

socket 2011 cpu? yes. 4 memory modules? no. you can use only 1 if you want

Sounds like this is a dedicated mining rig. Go in your BIOS and disable EVERY non-essential piece of hardware that you wont be using. Audio. Firewire. All but 1 NIC. Serial ports. Parallel Ports. Serial ATA Ports/controllers except 1 if using a hard drive. All but 1 CPU core if using a multi-core CPU. USB ports, unless you need a keyboard to get in for something. All of that is consuming "resources" I'm assuming that can be used for the hardware you actually want to use, i.e. video cards. Also, using 16x > 16x risers may be causing a problem, because your board is trying to negotiate to 16x speeds. Some boards, when negotiating to max slot speed, will turn off other slots entirely in order to have the full amount of bandwidth available (PCI-E lanes are not unlimited). Try using 1x risers across the whole shebang. If you have limited 1x risers, use the 16x risers in your PCI > PCI-E adapters since they are always 1x speed.

Also make sure your risers are not defective. I had a bunch of 1x/16x > 16x risers, and they all went bad because of the stress of plugging them into the cards or bending the cables, would either cause cards to freeze the system when a load was applied, or device manager would show errors, or the cards wouldn't even detect at all. I use 1x > 1x risers with the edge sanded off in order to accept anything bigger than 1x, and they have all worked no problem (have 10 in use now), and are effortless to plug a card in.

Edit: I didn't really read much of the article before. You say 16x > 16x doesnt work, but 1x > 16x does. It could be a bad riser or bad speed negotiating. Use the 16x> 16x risers in your PCI > PCI-E adapters since they always work at 1x. Powered shouldn't matter if you are doing underclock/volt. Also, I already have experience with 6 cards on 1 board as well as using PCI > PCI-E adapters (I'm using one in a 4 PCI-E slot board now, now have 5 slots).

Oh, almost forgot. You say you are using 2 PSU's. If you can, power on the PSU that ISN'T powering the motherboard FIRST, then the one that does SECOND. I mean, kind of worth a shot I guess. I've forgotten to plug in PCI-E power cords to a card before and they wont detect, or they malfunction. If the card doesn't have proper power before the motherboard tries to detect it, that might be a possible problem too.

wow thanks for the link. Thats damn cheap and fast shipping.

Doesn't look that special, but I use an MSI X79 Big Bang XPower-II. Looks pretty much identical to my board, except it uses a PCI-E power plug instead of molex for extra power.

People actually take what an antivirus program says seriously?

Mine is stuck at the exact same block too :/

Unless its advertised by an end user.. Though if hes smart, he wont advertise it unless its high.

not jsut power. Higher asic quality = able to run higher clocks at a given voltage while at the same time using less power (less leakage). An example is a 60% ASIC quality 7970 may only be able to run 1000MHz @ 1.125v and hit 90C while an 80% quality one would be able to hit 1200MHz @ 1.125v while hitting only 75C. This example may be a bit extreme, but is pretty much the bottom line difference.

what is hot box?

Now thats the porn I came here to see.

Increasing core clock by itself should increase MH/j efficiency a little, but you should gain a lot of raw processing power in too.
Increasing core voltage GREATLY decreases efficiency and no increase in core clock will make up for the MH/j loss, but if you pay very little or nothing for electricity, running with minimal undervolt or stock volts is an option. I pay $0.12069/KWh in Wisconsin and found that while I lose MH/j going from 0.95v core to 1.0625v core, the increase in core clocks should increase my net profits about 5% or so according to the spreadsheet I made.

Pretty much what I was saying in my post

I draw exactly 1000w at the wall between 2 rigs with 9 cards at 0.95v while maximizing core speeds on a per card basis. There are 3 5870's, 5 5830's, and 1 5770. They PSU's are a 750W HALE90 (80plus gold) and a PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 1KW SR (80plus silver). Both are single rail.

I also have an Antec 550w double rail PSU. It -barely- can power 2 5830's without turning off; it requires both cards to be undervolted and virtually no CPU load or the PSU just turns off.

Is that... some sort of water cooling block on the chipset?

You should already be finding the max clock at the voltage you are comfortable with on a percard basis. Not doing so is just robbing you of better MH/j and more shares/minute

Hmm, single molex > PCI-E power adapters. Been looking for those, but more than what I want to pay for them Also seems to be missing the middle 12v pin, would really prefer all 3 pins present.