H97 anniversary multi gpu question

fanatic26 wrote: Hello, I am building an Ethereum miner using this motherboard. I am able to get 5 video cards to show up using the smaller PCIE slots, but the card remotely plugged into the 16x larger slot does not show up. I am using https://www.amazon.com/Express-Adapter-Extender-Flexible-Extension/dp/B008BZBGPO  to reach from the motherboard to the video cards that support only the smaller form factor. Could it be the 16x slot is expecting a full size adapter?

No, the PCIe x16 slot can be used with any PCIe compatible card, whether it is X16, x8, x4, x2, or x1.

So you are trying to use six card in total, correct? None of the cards are in the old PCI lanes?

Do you have a power cable from the PSU connected to the PCIE power connector on the board? That connector is just above the first PCIe x1 slot. It provides extra power to the PCIe lanes, and will probably be needed when using the number of cards you want to use.

Are all of the other video cards running at x1? Meaning you have not used up all of the 16 PCIe lanes?

A potential problem that I have seen in this forum when using many video cards like you are is the amount of DRAM memory that is normally allocated for Windows to use to work with the cards is not enough for all the cards. Some boards have an option to increase the amount of that memory, I think the option is called MMIO, or something like that. I don't see that option anywhere in your board's manual. It would be in the Chipset Configuration screen, or possibly the ACPI screen, if it is there.

Apologies for my lack of response until now, I have been continuing to build more of these mining rigs and I now have 47 total online. Unfortunately I am still unable to get the 6th card working in any of the systems.

Somehow I managed to put the wrong motherboard name up. This is an H97 not Z97


I have the machine setup as follows:

H97 Anniversary mobo
Intel G3260 dual core
1x 4gb stick of ddr3-1600
128gb ssd
6x R9 380 8gb video cards

The first video card and the motherboard are powered off of an 850w ATX power supply. (Yes I have the molex power near the PCIE slots plugged in.) The remaining 5 cards are powered by an HP 2450w server PSU.

I have tried multiple configurations on multiple systems but I cannot get any card to work in the 16x slot using my risers. It does not matter if it is 1 card connected or all 6. I have also verified all cards do work individually so I do not think it is an issue with my cards or risers at this point.

5 of them are working using the 1x slots. I did not see a place in the BIOS to set the PCIE 16x slot down to 1x so maybe thats the problem?

Also I am running a custom linux distro that supports up to 8 video cards at a time so it should be configured properly to see all 6. Another strange thing I notice is that if I have all 6 cards connected the system does boot even though it puts out no video. I am able to ping the system.


Edited by fanatic26 - 08 Sep 2016 at 10:15am