I was wondering which board would be best for running the following components: 2 x GTX260 in SLI Asus Xonar 7.1 PCIe Sound Card Adaptec 1420SA RAID Controller My GTX260s are the Gainward ones with custom coolers so are slightly larger and need a decent gap between them to SLI them. The raid controller can be used in a PCI or a PCIe slot. I intend to run an i7 950 at stock in the board, with maybe a 10-20% overclock later. Memory will be 6GB of Kingston Hyper X. I also intend to use the Thermolab Baram cooler. So which board meets my criteria best?
If you dont want to spend much but want a quality board the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R is a good choice, With a BIOS update it will support SLI aswell as Crossfire but other than that I'd go with the UD5 EDIT: I wouldn't get the P6T SE as it doesnt support SLI. The P6tD does thou,
i'm a bit concerned about the slot configuration on the UD5 due the size of the gainward coolers - i'll have no access to the PCI slots
Just get the normal P6T: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-320-AS has everything you need and is rock solid
^The P6T vanilla is a good board but it has the same slot placement as the SE I believe; ie two cards in SLi would be jammed up against each other. I'm not sure if this would create thermal problems.
if that's the case than I think that you might have some problems due to ventilation and placement of the cards :/
Im running a 285 right up next to my Xonar D2 (Literally 2mm space between) on a P6T Deluxe without any ventilation problems. Thats in a CM Sniper, though I've added a couple of 120mm fans to the side as the Sniper tends to get hot around the VGA. Does the HAF have a side fan? If it does, or you can add one, you shouldnt have any problems really.
