Do-It-Yourself Quad-SLI: It's Official

Name: Do-It-Yourself Quad-SLI: It's Official - Page 5
Brand: Do-It-Yourself

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, August 09, 2006, 08:00 AM EDT

Assembling and building-up a Quad-SLI system is essentially the same as building a standard SLI system. Although there are some important things to consider when acquiring the components (motherboard compatibility, power supply, cooler, etc.), the actual assembly process is not difficult. Anyone that has experience assembling PCs should also be able to put together a Quad-SLI rig.

Memory & Graphics cards installed

The memory and processor get installed in the motherboard just like any other system. Then the GeForce 7950 GX2 cards each get inserted into their own PCI Express x16 graphics (PEG) slot and linked together via an SLI connector that slips over the "gold-finger" contacts at the top of each card. We assembled our system in an open air tech station to make it easier to illustrate the process, but the process is the same for any case once the motherboard has been mounted.

Clearance between and around the graphics cards

There are a few things to consider when assembling the system. With two double-wide graphics cards installed, a number of expansion slots will be unusable and some on-board ports and headers may be obstructed as well. As you can see in the pictures above one of the P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe's PCI slots and one PCI Express x1 slot are blocked by the 7950 GX2 cards. And there is limited space between and below the graphics cards

Connect your monitor to the graphics card in the first PEG slot

Once you've got everything assembled, your monitor should be plugged into the graphics card that's installed in the first PEG slot to initialize during the POST(this can be set in the system BIOS). This is typically the first PEG slot, closet the to processor on nForce-based motherboards. We'd also recommend flashing the motherboard to the latest BIOS available on the manufacturer's website. We used the v0204 BIOS for the Asus P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe featured here.

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Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com