PING: Asus ROG Xpander Owners ?

[bitlane]

Anyone own one or more of these for mining purposes ?

I found 1 price online from the UK (99 GBP...approx $160 USD ?)

The Facebook link below (and bottom pic) shows testers running up to 13 GPUs with multiple Xpanders from a single Rampage III Extreme motherboard.

I must have been living under a rock, as this is the first time I have come across this unit from Asus and have only seen the units that are 7-slots and shipping from China currently.







http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Accessories/ROG_Xpander/

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?773-Xpander-extensive-overview

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.492414967387.268984.405774002387

I would love to find out more about this setup and possibly give a couple a try....

[1715331570]

1715331570

[1715331570]

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[Coinoisseur]

Uses those Nvidia PCI-E routing chips, might be interesting for running 8 single GPU cards. Anyone know how well Linux supports these NF200 PCI-E routing chips?

Doesn't seem that great though, since it takes 2 PCI-E connections to then get 4. Better off trying something like this: http://www.anandtech.com/Gallery/Album/730

[bulanula]

The 13 cards thing was a joke in case you have not understood that yet.

Also there is a limit of 8 GPUs max for the ATI drivers and also motherboard BIOS allocation problems ( which can be avoided using virtualization but it is an ugly hack ).

[Gomeler]

I own one of these, used it for quad-SLI on the R3E as the NVIDIA requirement of a NF200 bridge chip for quad-SLI prevented the godly R3E from running quad. You are limited on the boards you can use the Xpander on, it requires BIOS support for the NVIDIA drivers to recognize it. It was really just a solution for ASUS to achieve 3D records on what was easily the best LGA1366 board for overclocking.

[Miner99er]

Imagine being able to plug this into any Mobo that has a single PCIe x16 slot.

I know a TON of HP desktops I have would be running quad cards.

too bad they don't work like that

And the price is on par with a 890FXA-GD70.

[mc_lovin]

once you put this board on top of your motherboard i don't think you would be able to fit cards in the PCI area anymore with the added height.

cool product though!

[Gomeler]

once you put this board on top of your motherboard i don't think you would be able to fit cards in the PCI area anymore with the added height.

cool product though!

Nope, this was a product meant strictly for benchmarking. If your Xpander isn't covered in a quarter inch of vaseline and paper towel you weren't using it right.