It's not that hard although it was especially hard to fit in a case. I've currently the 3090 in a normal slot and an AIO cooled 4090 vertically in the 2nd PCI with an extension cable. That was also really the only way for me to do it since my mainboard has no nice 2 slots space between first and second PCIe slot. So just having the second GPU directly under the 3090 it would mean one heats the other card way too much.
With a modern MB where you've more spacing between the two slots you could just have two cards horizontally although that will only work if they are not too fat. At first I thought I wouldn't have issues just placing one horizontally and one vertical but even my Phantek Evolve X is not wide enough for it. Most cards are already too wide to have a card vertically besides them. So it was a puzzle but it runs awesome and temperature stays nicely within limits when rendering images. Guess around 70 for the 3090 hot head.
To render you don't need SLI or NVLink etc just 2 GPUs will do. So that won't be the issue. My 3090 in the primary slot ain't ideal but in render times or with gaming it just has very little impact looking at benchmarks. You do need to take into account that when you render it will take the VRAM amount of the GPU which has least VRAM. For me no issue since both have 24GB.
I don't play much games but Battlefield 2024 is the only one for me which doesn't run if you've multiple GPU's (it runs but you have to play it in a really small window). So I made a little .bat file to disable the 3090. Saves power anyway so I just enable them if I do renders. That's BTW a really old bug but I don't think they care about solving it. Another thing is that I replaced my PSU with a 1300W but in reality I don't even think that was needed since while rendering the GPUs are at 100% but consume much less than with some games. Another thing, because my 3090 is the first card it will show the BIOS on the monitor connected to that card. I put my Wacom Cinteq on that one. My triples and VR are on the 4090 so the extra GPU is also nice so I can add more than 4 monitor devices. Normally have the Cinteq off if I don't use it but have to remember to turn it on if I need to do some BIOS changes.
I don't have secure boot enabled and I'm not really a noob with 40+ years of experience with computers and building my own but my GigaByte Designare Z390 needed also some PK key setting changed before I could enable it. So I did but that gave me blank screens as you saw. And since I don't see added value of secure boot in my environment I never had it enabled. That I need to remove my GPUs to get an image again makes having to enable secure boot a complete joke imo. Maybe I'll try once more since I now know how to get my BIOS screen back but it's far from fun.
I try to reply to you for **bleep**ing long time and it is pissing me off. EA wtf is wrong with that formatting? Even if i want to help people you simply won't let me.
That's the reply i am trying to post for past TWO HOURS
LOL I missed your reply, I think white lines or so can cause that error. I had it as well when I tried to post about the GPUs.
Every 3090 has 24GB of VRAM, that's also why Nvidia starts to get to be a bit annoying by still delivering little VRAM on even the 5090. Well, 32 GB is nice but having 16GB on other models is just cheap. Makes sense though since they also want Pro series cards to sell and if you render etc a 4090/5090 is fast and cheap compared to the pro-series. The only difference is support and a bit longer warranty besides extra VRAM.
I saw you reply somewhere secure boot is a default/mandatory Windows 11 thing but it's not. TPM2.0 is. And that's a big difference. Secure boot is simply not needed and adds not much to your computer at home. TPM2.0 as well but it's far less intrusive if you change it. My PC has 3xM2's, 2 GPUs and 3 normal HDDs. If I can't simply enable Secure Boot without rendering my system useless it's a stupid idea to force it on users. Might try it once more but for people who use a CPU without integrated graphics the black screen issue can be a big issue and internet is full of them.
RoadCraft is fun though ;)
