I have a MATX motherboard and case (Phenom M) which I've customised slightly. It has a home inside my custom desk, so don't want to change format..
using the Z77 Extreme4-M which has 3 Pcie Slots in positions(starting at nearest CPU) : (Current Config shown)
1. 16x (8x sli) : gtx780
2. 1x : covered by the above
3. 16x (8x sli) : K600
4. 16x (4x) : PCIE SSD (Was gtx590)
I recently swapped around my config to get a PCIE SSD in slot #4 - losing my gtx590 which I'd modded the case to fit
The PCIE SSD was a free$ 128gb from a friends MacBook which now houses my pagefile, scratch, local projects + downloads folder there; seems to be noticeably quicker for installer extraction, big project tasks etc.
FWIW, I cant boot to this drive(MB constraint) and although I could put all my install folders there (rather than installing to C:\Program Files) it would have my swap/etc back on C:\ or at worse a slow data drive..
Since removing my gtx590 I am sorely missing the 100points of Octanebench score when setting up scenes and/or materials and now want to upgrade again! prefer not to upgrade the whole motherboard since moving up will cost me $1k just to get MB, RAM and CPU only marginally better than my current (overclocked) setup..
So if we look at the budget being about $1k + disposable for this exercise: here's what I'm thinking.
1. GTX980Ti (EVGA Superclocked reference design) ~120 score
2. Covered by the above
3. K4200 ~40 score (decent single slot score and handles meshes/high res well)
4. PCIE SSD (potential future GPU expansion if/when my priorities change)
I think I'll hold off pressing the 'GO' button until official release of the GTX1080 / X80 so I get the best price possible for the 980ti.. (and an opportunity to upspec) but the above will keep my score as high as possible while working with my available slots
Any thoughts? watercooling not really an option because I cant afford the downtime: wouldn't get much change out of 3 days($$$) doing my first watercooling loop (inc. any associated case mods) not to mention I lose out on flexibility and it costs extra capital to boot! ($$$)