MSi z97 Gaming 5 PCIe question

[elisz]

So basically I'm gonna do an SLI set-up (GTX 1080 FTW). I read my manual and tried to search up a bit, but I didn't find anything for my question. It says on the manual that the slots are PCIe 3.0 x16 Slot. Not sure if it applies to all the slots. There are three slots overall, I was maybe thinking of putting the 2nd card at the very last slot. Would this make any difference?(I read somewhere that the last PCIe slot always impacts performance.) Or they are all the same? Because I would like to have my top card to have enough airflow at the very least. So if anyone has experience or has this motherboard, please help me out! Thanks.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Your slots while all 3 "3.0 x16" don't all work like that. SLI requires 2 x8 slots, and if you populate the 1st and 2nd slot you will get 3.0 x8 at each slot. The bottom slot runs at x4.

 

[rgd1101]

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z97-GAMING-5.html#hero-specification
Gen3 (16,0,0), (8,8,0), (8,4,4)
with 2 sli is 8x and 8x

 

[elisz]

Thanks. Both answers were equally great. Just decided RNG and picked the best one. Thank you both.