Kaby Lake MB with the most expandability?

[Ratteler]

I'm planning on running 2 nVidia GFX cards. I'm looking for a motherboard that handle 2 x16 PCIe GPU cards. No SLI obviously. I use my GPU for rendering and video editing in Blender, so CUDA cores are more important to me. I'm moving to 4K video production. I currently support WiFi and USB3 through 1x PCIe cards. I would like to support USB C and a PCIe SSD of some kind.

I'm not using any Apple monitors, so I'm guessing I don't need Thunderbolt.

The Kaby Lake boards I'm seeing on the current build list are all rather weak on expansion slots, and none of them seem to support 2 GPU cards at x16.

Any Ideas?

 

[Jamesbond007]

I'm planning on running 2 nVidia GFX cards. I'm looking for a motherboard that handle 2 x16 PCIe GPU cards. No SLI obviously. I use my GPU for rendering and video editing in Blender, so CUDA cores are more important to me. I'm moving to 4K video production. I currently support WiFi and USB3 through 1x PCIe cards. I would like to support USB C and a PCIe SSD of some kind.

I'm not using any Apple monitors, so I'm guessing I don't need Thunderbolt.

The Kaby Lake boards I'm seeing on the current build list are all rather weak on expansion slots, and none of them seem to support 2 GPU cards at x16.

Any Ideas?

Most Kaby Lake motherboards cannot support running 2 graphics cards both at x16, since the CPU only provides 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes for graphics card use. The few that can do this, the GA-Z270X-Gaming 9 for example, contain extra hardware that raise the cost significantly.

But even if you are willing to pay for it, the problem is that with the release of Z370 and the corresponding Coffee Lake CPUs last month, the Z270 motherboards are being phased out and production halted. So I don't think you will be able to find those boards now.

Another option to satisfy your requirement is to get a X299 motherboard together with a CPU that provides 44 PCIe 3.0 lanes. (There are cheaper CPUs on that platform that provides 28 PCIe lanes, and you can only run 2 graphics cards with them at a maximum of x16 + x8.) The cheapest CPU on that platform that can do this is the Core i9 7900X, and it costs USD 999. But even if you are willing to pay, the problem is that the platform is not yet natively supported in MacOS. There are some people here who seem to be able to get a X299 system to work on MacOS High Sierra, however. Search if you are interested.

 

[Ratteler]

Thanks for the response. I'll look into it.