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Slot 1 or 2 for Graphics card

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pianoman88

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 20, 2010
218
57
I recently purchased a 5,1 with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2048 MB in Slot 2. Is there any advantage to placing it in Slot 1?

Will this affect Slots 3 and 4? I'm placing PCI SSDs in them.

Thanks
 
Unless you have one of those rare single slot GTX 770 cards, yes, you would free up a PCIe slot.

Generally everyone uses slot 1 except for some uncommon problems that are fixed by using slot 2.
 
pianoman88 said:
I recently purchased a 5,1 with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2048 MB in Slot 2. Is there any advantage to placing it in Slot 1?

Will this affect Slots 3 and 4? I'm placing PCI SSDs in them.
Click to expand...

If you need access to Slot 3, you will need to move the card into SLot 1.

It will work in Slot 1, but people have reported erractic PCI fan behavior when placing an 'unsupported' card in Slot 1. The fan at the front (for cooling the Expansion Slots) will spin up and down. This may or may not be noticable. Some with more powerful cards have said it's loud. My card is fairly low-end so the spin-ups were not audible.
You can cure the erratic behavior by stressing the card briefly (with a benchmark app, for example). The PCI fan then settles down and runs more steadily and quietly (until the next startup, then you'll have to run the benchmark again).

Running the card in Slot 2, the PCI fan exhibits no erratic behavior.
 
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