I'm planning to buy a new desktop some time in the next few months and I'm wondering if this motherboard (P67 chipset, ASUS Maximus IV EXTREME (USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s, 3X SLI capable) has enough x16 PCI-e slots to run USB 3.0, RAID controller, two RevoDrivex2 SSD (which run through the PCI-e slots instead of SATA) and dual ATI graphics cards. Or would one of these have to be connected with a slower PCI slot? Will there be a better chipset released towards the end of 2011 which supports PCI-e 3.0? Also, any recommendations on sound card?

Additional components:
Processor: Intel Core i7 2600K 4.7GHz - 5.2GHz LGA 1155 Quad-Core Processor (8MB L3 Cache)

Graphics Card: Dual 2GB GDDR5 ATI Radeon HD 5870

USB 3.0 SuperSpeed 2-Port PCI Express Card

RAID Configuration: RAID 0:
Hard Drive One: 960GB RevoDriveX2 - PCI-Express SSD
Hard Drive Two: 960GB RevoDriveX2 - PCI-Express SSD
Hard Drive Three: 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black - SATA-II, 7,200RPM

Networking: Linksys Wireless-N USB Network Adapter with Dual-Band

The ASUS Maximus IV Extreme is IMO the best P67 motherboard and the only thing can compete is the MSI Big Bang Marshall but that has Hydra which svcks and doesn't allow 3 way SLI/Crossfire I think.

BTW I think you would be better off with a dual GTX 560 TI or 6970 which comes more expensive but you could simply buy a 2500K which lowers your price by 100usd or something and gaming wise you'll be better off with a better GPU than a CPU (besides the 2500K is already a very good CPU...)

EDIT: IMO the best soundcards are the Creative X FI SoundBlaster FATAL1TY Champion series and the ASUS Xonar D2X 7.1

That board has:
4 PCIe x16 slots (I believe two will revert to x8 when PCIe lanes are exceeded)
1 PCIe x4 slot
1 PCIe x1 slot

From the top, the first slot may become x8 and the fourth slot (third longer slot).

***
The SSD controllers require x4 (or greater) so your configuration should be like this:

PCIE_X16/8_1 (first slot) => Radeon HD 5870
PCIE_X1_2 (second slot) => not used [blocked]
PCIE_X16_2 (third slot) => SSD controller
PCIE_X8_3 (fourth slot) => Radeon HD 5870
PCIE_X16_4 (fifth slot) => not used [blocked]
PCIEX4_1 (sixth slot) => SSD controller

Hopefully the Crossfire bridge will go over the SSD controller. You probably will need to use the Asus supplied bridge as it is longer than the AMD standard. For the SSD controller is the X16 slot you may consider geting a support or plastic insert (google is failing me) to ensure the controller doesn't get unseated.

Thanks very much for this detailed advice!

It sounds like with this configuration I would not be able to run the USB 3.0 PCI-e card with one of the x16 slots, so I may need to consider getting only one revodrive SSD.

Also you may put (most likely) The Radeons in Slots 1 and 3. and the SSD controller in Slots 5 and 6. This may eliminate crossfire bridge issues. On this motherboard in dual Crossfire mode each PCIe slot gets a maximum of x8 speeds regardless of location (unless this is a typo, as triple crossfire is 8x, 16x, 16x, and should have enough lanes for x16 x16 dual mode).

The Asus manual does indicate that you should use Slots 1 and 4 in dual crossfire configurations. These slots seem to share the same PCI Express lanes and will revert to x8 each when two cards are present. Triple Crossfire configuration would use Slots 1, 3 and 5.

All due respect you don't need dual SSD controllers. Western Digital Caviar Black HDDs are almost as fast and a lot less expensive. Plus you may want to add a PCIe based sound card, but that depends on what you are building the computer for. For gaming I simply wouldn't bother with the SSD controller at all. It is a waste of money for a slight performance gain. The integrated SATA controller is sufficient. Standard Performance HDDs are sufficient (Caviar Blacks or Raptors... Caviar Blacks are a better value).

I'm considering buying instead the MSI Big Bang XPower motherboard, which has six x16 PCI-e slots, integrated USB 3.0 ports as well as integrated RAID controller. Although I would lose the use of a couple of the slots because of the width of the graphics cards, it still seems that I would be able to use at least 2 of the 6 slots for revodrive x2 PCI-e SSD cards, and I don't need to use up any slots for RAID controller or USB 3.0.

The fact that it is X58 chipset means I would need to go with the i7-980x CPU or similar, and would not be able to use any Sandy Bridge CPU, but since the P67 mobos have been recalled, it wouldn't seem wise to buy one for a few months anyways, no?

Would there be any drawback to going with the Big Bang instead of the Asus Maximus IV? Or is there a different X58 motherboard that would be better? I would be using this system primarily for 1080p video editing, BD authoring, creative suite apps, etc.


http://us.msi.com/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=170&prod_no=1988

vs.

http://rog.asus.com/Product.aspx?PId=43

Unless I'm missing something about the overclocking potential of the Asus, it seems like the Big Bang is a much better choice.