can I use 4 7970s on my current PC? And other questions.

[MrBilling]

I am going to buy 4 7970s but I have a question first.


Instead of building a whole rig can I just put all 4 of them on my computer using risers/adapters?

I have:

EVGA FTW3 X58 Mobo    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188065
Core i7 965 Extreme
12GB 1600 Mhz
Silverstone Zues 1200 W PS


I have

2 PCI Express X16
1 PCI Express X8
1 PCI Express X1
2 PCI



Cant I just hook 2 of them up to the 2 X16 slots, 1 up to the X8 slot, and using a riser/adapter hook 1 up to the X1 slot?


And I know I will need more power than my current PS.


I have a 1100 W PC Power & Cooling PS.  Can I plug it in and run just a couple of the cards from it?  And run the other 2 off of my current PS?




Any help is greatly appreciated.


Thank you

[MrBilling]

One more thing.


Do they make PCI Express 2.0 to PCI adapters?  If they did I could technically sun 6 on my mobo right?

[scifimike12]

Don't worry about the PCIe electrical rating.  Your board has (3) x16 and (1) x1 physical slots.  Therefore, you'll need (3) x16→x16 and (1) x16→x1 adapters.

They do make adapters for PCI slots but it can be expensive to the point where buying a new board would outweigh the price of the adapter.

I don't think PC P&C makes a 1100W PSU, unless you meant this:

https://shop.pcpower.com/power-supply/turbo-cool-1200.html

or

http://www.pcpower.com/power-supply/turbo-cool-1kw-sr.html

[MrBilling]

Don't worry about the PCIe electrical rating.  Your board has (3) x16 and (1) x1 physical slots.  Therefore, you'll need (3) x16→x16 and (1) x16→x1 adapters.

They do make adapters for PCI slots but it can be expensive to the point where buying a new board would outweigh the price of the adapter.

I don't think PC P&C makes a 1100W PSU, unless you meant this:

https://shop.pcpower.com/power-supply/turbo-cool-1200.html

or

http://www.pcpower.com/power-supply/turbo-cool-1kw-sr.html

Its the 1000W one.  I dunno why I thought it was 1100W.


Anyone know if Gigabyte cards are voltage unlocked?  Or which cards are voltage unlocked?

[ISAWHIM]

You can only use 4x on that board. There is no such thing as a PCI to PCIe converter. PCIe is 8 PCI slots. There is no physical possibility of PCIe ability from a PCI. You CAN turn PCIe into 8x PCI slots...

The most 7970's you can fit on any motherboard, is 8. Only 4 for dual-core cards. (Windows/Linux and hardware has limitations which only allow 8 cores to be assigned/operated/allocated.)

The only "issue" is that you will be consuming a great deal of useless power, in the process of hashing. 1/5th of your consumed power is dead-CPU wasted.

If your rig, without cards, consumes 250W itself... adding four more 250W sources of power will total 1250W, which will peak over 1500W at times, and stay there if OCed.

What you want for a rig, is one that allows the most cards, and operates at the least power.

For example, my rigs can hold 6x 7970 per motherboard, with a total wall-wattage of 35W, with no cards running. Populated, and running stock, it consumes about 1280W, with the 6x 7970's and two PSU's for power. (Note, all fans run on 110v, not PSU power. Fans at 12V are a waste of power and just add heat.)

I could save a little more, running Linux from a USB, but I enjoy windows on my SSD, which only consumes 2W running, and 0.2W resting, where it stays most of the time.

HDD consumes 14-55W, on average...
That CPU consumes about 35-85W, on average...
That ram consumes 5-15W just to keep it "up"...
All your fans, I am sure is another 20W of wasted power and added heat...

This is my "baseline" system. (Roughly 10% of consumed power is wasted on the CPU-waste per 6x, as opposed to your 4x with 1/5th cpu-waste power.)

MOBO: MSI Computer Corp. (Z77A-G45) DDR3 1600 Intel LGA 1155 Motherboard
CPU: Intel Pentium G620T (SR05T) CPU LGA1155 3MB 2.20GHz 5GT/s
VIDEO: 6x (Radeon XTX 7970, or PowerColor 7970) - 3.954GHs, {1245W}
RAM: Silicon Power 2GB DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Model SP002GBLTU133V02
SSD: OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD3-2VTX90G 3.5" 90GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
PSU: 2x 750W (80 gold, server PSU's) Dell