It's been a great board and for the last few years it hasn't complained about being regulated to Guest/HTPC duties while being the landing pad for unwanted parts. It never once complained that it didn't receive a single upgrade from my last 2 builds when those parts went to family. Last week my 1080ti arrived for my desktop and my 2x 980s needed a new home and that inspired a scrounging through my parts bucket to see what I could add. Prior to this the specs on the system were:
 

• i7-950@4.0ghz
• 12gb Corsair DDR3@1600Mhz
• 2x EVGA 670 4gb
• Corsair HX750 PSU
• Intel X-25m 128gb
• WD Black 640GB
• Creative SBLive Xfi Titanium
• Coolermaster HAF w/ 3x 200mm and 1x 140mm fan
• Hyper 212 w/ 2x 120mm SP fans.
• 2x LG BD Drives (handy for binge watching tv shows)

 
I added the following:
 

• 2x EVGA 980
• 2x WD Black 2tb
• Corsair H105 240mm AIO cooler
• Corsair Commander Mini - Fan/LED controller
• 3x Corsair LED strips
• added additional 200mm fan as well as replaced all fans with Corsair AF/SP series with an additional 120mm added to the drive cage

Going into it I was definitely prepared for some bottlenecking and the first time I powered the system on it booted into Windows though it took nearly 2 min to get beyond the welcome screen on Win7. I attributed that to Windows acclimating itself to the new hardware. I first noticed a problem with the USB ports not functioning properly. The backlighting on the keyboard were illuminated but got no respose from keypresses nor did the mouse cursor move. At first I thought it was a hard lock but when I pressed the power button, Windows immediately went through the shut down process like normal. I booted again and began plugging into different USB ports and discovered that only the last two USB 2.0 ports were working. I poked around in windows a bit and it did recognize all the new hardware installed but when I selected enable SLI with NCP the system crashed. From that point on it would not boot into Windows and would restart after the 3rd boot screen, just before the first Windows 7 boot screen.
 
At first I thought the PSU was the problem. Even though that hardware still should have fallen just under 750w, it's an old PSU so I swapped in one I knew would handle them. No change in behavior. I've tried just about everything from unplugging other devices down to only motherboard, cpu, memory and 980s and with those installed they simply will not boot. I even tried to fresh install windows on a separate drive and it would restart just as soon as I pressed any key to boot from USB. I tried different combinations of slots, disabling onboard features, different SLI bridges with no luck. Each 980 will boot just fine, on it's own in any slot on the board. The board will boot fine with the above hardware with 2x 670s, 2x 460s or 2x 260s in SLI just fine. The only thing that will not work is the 2x 980s(which work fine in the system they were pulled from) and through all the troubleshooting the only thing I can conclude is the motherboard just doesn't have enough juice left to push them.
 

bill1024
If you added 2 GTX980 video cards there is a setting in the bios you have to change.
It is the "Low Memory Gap" setting. Set it to 3g and see if that helps.
 
That is for x58 with two or more gtx9xx cards
 

+1
 
If that does not fix it try:
 
Document your BIOS settings (camera on your phone works well for this)
 
set BIOS to default, save and shutdown
Clear the CMOS, boot to default BIOS settings
reboot and re-enter your previous BIOS setting

jmike00
Ever do something where you feel like an idiot? This is one of those times.
 
This worked and the bad thing is I knew about this setting. I knew what it did and assumed I had it set to 3G and never once checked. My 670 4Gs were purchased along with my Sandy Bridge build but they arrived a while before my case. Impatiently I tossed them into the X58 for a while, which was my main rig at the time and remember reading to be sure to set Memory Gap to my VRAM or in my case the max setting since my cards were 4g models. I went all day yesterday knowing it was set to 3G because I had done so for the 670s which had been working fine. I now remember that I'd done a handful of restore default settings in the BIOS and never remember setting that back which means the 670s worked with that setting on Auto and my original change was unneeded and wasn't there anymore.
 
Hmmm...think I'll go sulk now. Or benchmark and see how well 2x 980s do behind an i7-950
 
 

we all have had those moments 

Glad to see you got it sorted

Yeah, only a percentage had issues.... but the people who had them, were very bad indeed
 
I would never have thought this build would make it so long... but I just pulled 140th place in the 4K benchmark with a gtx 1080Ti SC2!!!
Going to be hard to retire her for my new build this year.. old girl is still a beast

I would go ahead and drop in one of these hexcore xeon CPUs. For less than 25$ it is a great bang for the buck upgrade.
They are 32nm CPUs so they run cool and a 4ghz overclock is easy. Many hit 4.2 - 4.4 with out too much trouble.
The FTW3 is ready to take one of these CPUs with just the newest BIOS update, no other mod needed.
They are BCLK unlocked. 23 x 175 =4ghz for an easy 4ghz
x5660
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-X5660-2-8GHz-12MB-6-4GT-s-LGA1366-CPU-Server-Processor-SLBV6-/322536798492?hash=item4b18b0f91c:g:9vYAAOSwhvFZLeCy
 
Here is a w3680 hexcore for 85 if you want a CPU that is multiplier and BCLK unlocked (i7-980x)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/S...4ec:g:vW8AAOSwdGFY4nMz
 
I have both x5660 and w3680 in my FTW3 and either way it is a nice upgrade, I have two EVGA FTW3, nice boards!

The FTW3, SLI3 and Classified3 all should run a xeon out of the box.

Damn you guys for putting these upgrade thoughts into my head. Actually maybe this will satisfy my lust to upgrade my main desktop, allowing me to hold out until x299 has matured or for even Coffee Lake.