[RockHardMcNasty]

I'm in the process of buying components for my first real build. I'm pretty sold on tri-fire 6970's. I will be running an eyefinity set up on 3 1080 monitors. The rest of the system will consist of a p8z68 deluxe, i5 2500k, 1 ssd, 1 hdd, 1 optical drive, noctua dh14, and the case fans on the raven rv02-e, which i believe is 3x 180mm and 1x 120mm (?). I was originally planning on just doing dual 6970's and using a corsair hx850 (or ax850). Will the same PSU handle the third 6970, or should I bump it up to 1000w? If that's the case, I will consider spending the few extra bucks and getting a 1200w for future-proofing sake. Thoughts?

 

[Yumyums]

AX850 would handle that fine. Have fun with that eyefinity

 

[ryanbob1234]

Welcome to ocn

Hx850 or if you have enough money a hx1000

 

[GameBoy]

Yeah, 850w will be fine for three 6970's.

 

[RockHardMcNasty]

Awesome. Thanks for the quick replies. One more quick question before I place my order though, is it worth getting the AX series over the HX for the higher efficiency?

 

[ryanbob1234]

The ax is the better power supply, But the hx is cheaper and as good, So Would recommend you get the HX and save your money

 

[pioneerisloud]

Question:
How are you going to run tri fire on a board that only supports 2 cards in SLI / Crossfire?

That third slot won't handle another full out GPU for SLI / Crossfire, as its limited to 4x (or 1x if you use ANY other expansion cards).

 

[ezveedub]

I agree, you need an Asus P8P67 WS Revolution or Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD7-B3 mobo for three 6970s

 

[JunkoXan]

he could use a 6990 and a 6970 for tri-fire which would only require 2 PCI-E slots

 

[RockHardMcNasty]

Hah, wow! I could have sworn I read that it was 8x/8x/8x capable, but I admit I did not double check this since deciding to go 3x GPU. Thanks for pointing that out.

I'd really like to stay with a z68 board for the ssd caching. If I'm not mistaken, the maximus iv extreme-z would handle it at 16x/16x/8x, is this correct?

I had considered going the 6990 + 6970 route, but for roughly the same cost I would get better performance out of 3 true 6970's.

 

[pioneerisloud]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JunkoXan he could use a 6990 and a 6970 for tri-fire which would only require 2 PCI-E slots

He said nothing about a 6990, he said three 6970's.