So I have my old 790i motherboard and doing work at a computer shop having extra bench boxes for recoveries and of the such helps alot. The top slot no longer functions which is why i upgraded years back in the first place. I can boot with a card in the 2 or 3 pcie16 slot but the bios halts on it saying that it needs to be in slot one. Tried futzing with the bios but maybe I didnt find the right option.
 
Is there some way either hardware setting like the newer boards with jumper or toggle switchs or modified bios that can allow me to use this awesome board for a spare workstation box?
 
Thanks.

I looked into this a while back. There are not any hardware changes you can make to the board to allow you to run 1 card in one of the other slots. There are also not any options in the BIOS that allow for this. If you REALLY want to continue using the board, you can send it into EVGA and they will repair it for you at a pretty high cost. If the board is registered under the original owner and is still under the lifetime warranty for the A1 versions, they will send you a new board that they can find in their inventory of equivalent value. I hope this helps!

No worries!