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OMG now you're nailing down the reasons this board was criticized so harshly. Asus didn't add ANY pathway switches between slots. You know, those cheap little 2-lane pieces that you see all over mainstream Z97 boards? None. So the top lanes are locked into x16 mode (or x16/x8 on the 5820k), and the bottom slot is locked into x8 mode (or x4 on the 5820k). AND, the M.2 slot is locked into PCIe 3.0 x4 mode, so the only pathway switches available are the ones that turn
off the bottom slot to turn
on the M.2 interface.
If you want M.2 and three high-bandwidth slots (SLI + something else), don't even bother with this board. If you don't care about either the last slot
or the M.2 slot, you're good to go!
If you want more PCIe 3.0 slot and more M.2 flexibility, check out the
MSI X99S Gaming 7
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That board's slot config won't work for me. This seems to be the only board on the market with the slot config I need. I looked at the board and I can't figure out where the extra PCI-e 2.0 lanes went.
The MSI board also has one of those Killer NICs. Yuck.
EDIT: Let me clearify. I want two empty slots between the top two x16 slots and an x8 slot at the very bottom for airflow.
My HHHL RAID card gets extreamly hot (without a fan I measured it at 100C). The slot fan I have for my RAID card takes up 2-3 slots on its own, so the RAID card needs to be in the bottom slot so the fan can be in case slots not on the motherboard.
While the blower style coolers will work where wedged aginst each other, the quieter open-air coolers work much better with a gap between the cards.
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Like I said, If you don't care about either the last slot or the M.2 slot, you're good to go! In this case, give up the M.2 slot

If you can get away with a slower M.2 interface, there's always the
Gigabyte X99-UD4. You can use the first, third and fourth x16 slots for SLI plus your RAID card, and you can use the second x1 slot for your network card.