ASRock 970 Extreme 4 (General Enquiry)

[Intrepid]

Hello there, new user.

I own the ASRock 979 Extreme 4 motherboard. I am planning on adding a few upgrades, namely a new sound card and a placement graphics card.

As you can see from the info I have provided in the above link, there is a PCIE x1 slot above the first PCIx16 slot. My current graphics card occupies the x16 slot and I have a wireless network card occupying the x1 slot.

I have found a great sound card that I would like to install into my PC, however my existing and new graphics card obstructs the second and remaining x1 PICE slot because it is double width card.

This means I have two options:

1. Install my new PCIE sound card into one of the 2 unused x16 slots.

2. Move my existing graphics card into the second of the x16 slots, to install the sound card into the second PCIE x1

Here are my questions;

If I pursue option 1 stated above, will the sound card work in that slot, and if so will it affect the performance of my graphics card in any way?

If I go with option 2, will my graphics card only run at 8x speed instead of x16?

The Manual Says:

1.2 Specifications

Expansion Slot

- 3 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (PCIE2/PCIE4: single at x16 (PCIE2) / x8 (PCIE4), or dual at x8 (PCIE2) / x8 (PCIE4); PCIE5: x4 mode)

- 2 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots

- 2 x PCI slots

- Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX, 3-Way CrossFireX and CrossFireXTM

- Supports NVIDIA® SLI

2.4 Expansion Slots (PCI and PCI Express Slots)

There are 2 PCI slots and 5 PCI Express slots on this motherboard.

PCI Slots: PCI slots are used to install expansion cards that have the 32-bit PCI interface.

PCIE Slots: PCIE1 / PCIE3 (PCIE x1 slot; White) is used for PCI Express cards with x1 lane width cards, such as Gigabit LAN card and SATA2 card.

PCIE2 / PCIE4 (PCIE x16 slot; Blue) is used for PCI Express x16 lane width graphics cards, or used to install PCI Express graphics cards to support SLI and CrossFireX function.

PCIE5 (PCIE x16 slot; Blue) is used for PCI Express x4 lane width cards, or used to install PCI Express graphics cards to support 3-Way CrossFireX function.

Additional info; I do not plan to use the SLI feature on the motherboard now or in the future. My new graphics card will also be a two width graphics card.

I hope I have given you as much info as I can.

Thanks for your response.

[Tweakurr]

I would dump the LAN card, this board has PCIE x1 Gigabit LAN built in. If you have the alternate bracket for the 1X card, it can be installed in a spare 16x slot and will work fine. Keep the video card in a full 16X slot.

[Intrepid]

Thanks for your reply Tweakurr.

The network card I have is a wireless card and using a wired LAN connection is not practical in my case as my router is physically too far away from my PC. So it has to stay in the PC for that reason.