Which PCI Express Sockets do I use for sli?

[BGrei]

Hi to who ever this concerns,

I have two EVGA 970 ssc cards that I am looking to sli. The mother board I am using is this guy.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128723

I am trying to decide which PCIE slots I should use for my cards. In my manual for the board it tells me that the top PCIE slot runs at x16 the middle one runs at x8 and the last one runs at x4, but I personally don't really know what the difference between those would be. I guess that I am mainly concerned that if I put them in the first too they would get very hot. But will putting one on the top and one on the bottom PCIE reduce performance?

Thank you for any help you can give
-Brian

 

[Suztera]

You can only run SLI with the first two PCIE x16 slots. The 3rd one is only X4 speed so it does not meet the requirements of SLI.
2 Way SLI runs in X8/ X8 mode with your motherboard.

 

[getochkn]

......from the specs for the motherboard.

1. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.

1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)
(The PCIEX16 and PCIEX8 slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
* The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.

1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
* The PCIEX4 slot shares bandwidth with all PCI Express x1 slots. All PCI Express x1 slots will become unavailable when a PCIe x4 expansion card is installed.
* When installing a x4 or above card in the PCIEX4 slot, make sure to set PCIE Slot Configuration (PCH) in BIOS Setup to x4. (Refer to Chapter 2, "BIOS Setup," "Peripherals," for more information.)

3 x PCI Express x1 slots
(The PCIEX4 and PCI Express x1 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)

1 x PCI slot


So the PCIe16 and PCIe8 slots are the ones to use. It will downgrade your first slot to 8x but that shouldn't effect anything.

 

[BGrei]

Awesome guys! Thank you for the fast responses. You guys helped a lot!