MSI Z77A-G45: 7 PCI-E slots for only $115. Question is, will they all work?

[ssateneth]

Update: Got 5 slots working so far without the assistance of a PCI-E presence short. This is with all slots populated with a GPU via a 1x > 1x riser.

[ssateneth]

Update2: Got a 6th slot working with the assistance of a presence short. #7 proves difficult. I'm hoping it's just a bad riser or bad short, but each 1x slot above a 16x seems to work.
Edit: I put in a ticket with MSI a few days ago, this might be relevant. Here was the response. Very bad english, but the important part is at the end.

Ok, this is what I could find on the PCIE slots 2x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots 1x PCIe 2.0 x16 slot PCI_E7 supports up to PCIe x4 speed 4x PCIe 2.0 x1 slots When PCI_E4 is installed, PCI_E3 will be not function.

Necroedit: old pictures removed.

[Raralith]

Very nice

[ssateneth]

It may not be 7 slots, but I'm happy with 6. I'm not about to return it (and the cpu) for a 20% restocking fee, plus it was a big pain in the butt setting it all up. Probably overpaid a little for 6 slots, but the CPU, board, and hard drive only consume about 25 watts at the wall on an 80plus gold PSU, which means better overall mhash/j

Plus I like MSI's board layout. I got an x79 Big Bang XPower II in my main PC. The only nuance is the silly chipset and mosfet heatsinks.

Also, FWIW, the Celeron G440 only consumes 5 watts when idle, and 9 watts under load with linpack. I have not extensively tested the ondie GPU, but hwinfo64 claimed the GPU package was only taking in 0.064 watts when I was getting baseline power consumption with no video cards installed.

[p00chie]

It may not be 7 slots, but I'm happy with 6. I'm not about to return it (and the cpu) for a 20% restocking fee, plus it was a big pain in the butt setting it all up. Probably overpaid a little for 6 slots, but the CPU, board, and hard drive only consume about 25 watts at the wall on an 80plus gold PSU, which means better overall mhash/j

Plus I like MSI's board layout. I got an x79 Big Bang XPower II in my main PC. The only nuance is the silly chipset and mosfet heatsinks.

Also, FWIW, the Celeron G440 only consumes 5 watts when idle, and 9 watts under load with linpack. I have not extensively tested the ondie GPU, but hwinfo64 claimed the GPU package was only taking in 0.064 watts when I was getting baseline power consumption with no video cards installed.

what ati drivers are you using?
i have the same mainboard and it only sees 4 with pcie-1x raisers without anything shorted.
i used all green marked slots but in win7 x64 i can see 5 cards with one card that has an error

[papaminer]

I have the G55 and I can only get linux detect 5 gpus..

out of topic...

Can anybody confirm?

Does this mobo detects 6gpu out of the box?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130649

[hax0red]

I have the Z77A-G45 V2 with a G1610 (20 PCIe lanes) with x1 to x16risers 4 powered 2 non and have followed the diagram posted by ssateneth but have had little luck. I have 5 gpu's running and 6 show but the last is giving code 43 which is usually a bus issue. I have everything disabled possible except USB (bios shows no specifics on USB 3.0 just usb) and PCI 3.0 on auto and disabled so I'm not sure what else can be done. I'm running windows 8 with several different drivers tried. I figure if 5 are showing the drivers can be the issue I wouldn't think.

[tarui]

what's pcie presence short???

[btcdrak]

I have the Z77A-G45 V2 with a G1610 (20 PCIe lanes) with x1 to x16risers 4 powered 2 non and have followed the diagram posted by ssateneth but have had little luck. I have 5 gpu's running and 6 show but the last is giving code 43 which is usually a bus issue. I have everything disabled possible except USB (bios shows no specifics on USB 3.0 just usb) and PCI 3.0 on auto and disabled so I'm not sure what else can be done. I'm running windows 8 with several different drivers tried. I figure if 5 are showing the drivers can be the issue I wouldn't think.

Crazy solution - download the 13.1 driver from teckpowerup.com (they use a different driver for some odd reason) and make sure you use null VGA adapters on all cards, then it will work. Better reinstall windows or make damn sure you uninstall catalyst first though (using their tool - but I'm not convinced it works properly).

[kslavik]

That's the issue right there.  You need to use an Ivy Bridge CPU with PCIe 3.0 support.  Otherwise the second PCIe slot is disabled or won't work correctly.  Though the PCIe x1 slots should work fine.  Maybe MSI didn't provide enough PLX switches to compensate the bandwidth from the CPU.  I guess that is why you have to fork out more $$ for an expensive board like a Z77A-GD80 which does support it.

Well even with the 2nd PCIe slot not working properly and one of the PCIex1 slots disabled, there are still 5 slots, but I could not get 5 GPUs recognized no matter which slot combinations i tried.  I spent an entire day trying to get this board to run 5 cars.  Would not want to buy a $199 Ivy Bridge to test this board further.

You could buy Ivy Bridge Celeron G1610 for $50
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116889

or I3 3220 Ivy Bridge for $120

I myself was able to run 7 GPUs (3x5970 and 1x5830) from similar motherboard: MSI Z77A-GD65 with Win 7 Home 32-bit

[hax0red]

I have the Z77A-G45 V2 with a G1610 (20 PCIe lanes) with x1 to x16risers 4 powered 2 non and have followed the diagram posted by ssateneth but have had little luck. I have 5 gpu's running and 6 show but the last is giving code 43 which is usually a bus issue. I have everything disabled possible except USB (bios shows no specifics on USB 3.0 just usb) and PCI 3.0 on auto and disabled so I'm not sure what else can be done. I'm running windows 8 with several different drivers tried. I figure if 5 are showing the drivers can be the issue I wouldn't think.

Crazy solution - download the 13.1 driver from teckpowerup.com (they use a different driver for some odd reason) and make sure you use null VGA adapters on all cards, then it will work. Better reinstall windows or make damn sure you uninstall catalyst first though (using their tool - but I'm not convinced it works properly).

 Thanks I had seen that solution and tried it in the past but never had any luck. I also want to say I increased the clock bus clock from 32 to 64, 96 ect with no luck although this worked on my 99FXA G65 with 5 GPUs.

 As for removing AMD drivers I've become and expert at it and long since realized doing it by hand is ideal until I find time to write an app.

[hax0red]

Well tried techpowerup's 13.1 drivers and code 43 went away but cgminer and kbsync (I think is the name) keep crashing now. Updated the conf file so all should be well and rebooted a few times. I'm reformatting now...


 Thanks, at least that's some progress.

[hax0red]

Ok I reformatted and installed techpowerup's 13.1 drivers. I tried with and without hdmi audio drivers and this was the result both times:


C:\Users\Chris\Desktop\cgminer-3.2.0-windows>cgminer -T
 [2013-08-05 10:40:31] Started cgminer 3.2.0
 [2013-08-05 10:40:31] Loaded configuration file cgminer.conf

 [2013-08-05 10:40:32] clDevicesNum returned error, no GPUs usable

 [2013-08-05 10:40:32] No devices detected!
 [2013-08-05 10:40:32] Waiting for USB hotplug devices or press q to quit

 [2013-08-05 10:40:32] Too many values passed to set temp cutoff


 Yet all 6 GPU's show under display adapters without errors.


 

[erem]

What do you think about this motherboard?
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P6T7_WS_SuperComputer/

[hax0red]

No luck with windows 8. I am gonna go back to windows 7 and give it another try with the techpowerup drivers.

[zvs]

wtf, 9 month old thread bump

i had 7 gpus running with catalyst 11.12

[hax0red]

Tried a tutorials suggestion to use catalyst windows 8 + 13.1 and then install 12.6 display drivers but it used a GD55 motherboard so I'm not sure if that was the difference. As of right now both 13.1 from techpowerup and 13.1 from amd's site to 12.6 driver method both return clDevicesNum returned error, no GPUs usable no matter what gpu amount I choose to try and utilize in cgminer. If I disconnect 1 card and reinstall the drivers the machine runs great with 5 but I was really hoping to try my Lepa 1600s with 6 gpu's underclocked a little(would depend on how much weather I stayed with 6 or went back to 5).

Only thing I can think of now is the diagram above may be flawed by accident and or I setup the presence short wrong for this configuration? I went with the x1 presence short vs x16....is that the same as you used ssateneth?

[hax0red]

Got it...was my fault. The conf file had some sort of error I cant seem to find but when I copied a working 5 gpu version and modded it for 6 all was well.


 The Lepa 1600 ran great with slight overclocks for about 10 minutes then blew the breaker (15 amp) so I think I'll swap it out with a 20 amp one eventually but for now I'm gonna replace the one 7970 I had wired in with a 7870 XT that runs best at 860 core and less then 1 volt which gets me 420-430 kh.

[Araviel]

Hi, i'm trying to get 6 cards running but when I fill the last pcie blue slot nothing detected, even with 2-3 cards :/

with Celeron G1610

thanks in advance.

[Araviel]

Windows 8 64 / catalyst 12.6 with 6 7950 even with powered or unpowered risers the two last (blue) pcie 16x don't detects cards only if plugged without risers. Atm only 5 cards running on all 1x filled and the first 16x (two others don't work with risers (1x > 16x)

I'm on z77a GD65 supposed to work WITHOUT shortened pins so idk what i can do now...

is there something to activate on bios ?

thanks in advance