The most hardcore gamers use multiple graphics cards in CrossFire and SLI configurations. And yet, slinging dual-slot cards together eats up a lot of expansion space. We compare five eight-slot cases with room for complex graphics configurations.

When a motherboard manufacturer makes what we consider to be a bad decision, it's usually a matter of practicality. The most notorious of these is a x16 slot in at the bottom of a board, encouraging you to drop in a graphics card that hangs over the edge. Trying to build a system with four double-slot cards within the ATX form factor even necessitates you use that potentially problematic bottom slot (never mind the thermal issues you're bound to have with card coolers shoved so close to each other).

Better card cooling comes from placing double-slot graphics cards three spaces apart, maintaining an empty slot between the fans. Again, we're struck by the limitations of ATX as the empty slot between each double-slot card again forces you to put the third card in a three-way setup in the seventh slot position. Yet again, motherboards that use this spacing are rare.

Those are the acceptable technical reasons for a x16 slot at the bottom of your motherboard. However, we suspect that engineering convenience is the real reason we usually find x16-lane slots at the bottom of ATX boards. More space between the graphics slot and the motherboard’s top edge allows memory to be positioned lower, easing potential circuit routing issues. More space between the CPU socket and graphics card slot facilitates larger heatinks on platforms that still require a northbridge. More space between the graphics card and memory latches even allows memory to be replaced more easily with the graphics card installed.

While those might not sound like good enough reasons to inconvenience a builder by putting the last graphics slot at the very bottom of a board, the prevalence of such designs compelled a number of case manufacturers to respond with a variety of solutions that offer eight slots of upgrade space, rather than the standard seven.

A few vendors carry several enclosures with eight or more slots. However, time constraints forced us to limit today's round-up to one submission per manufacturer. One company decided not to participate at all because its only recent eight-slot model is in a far lower budget class, though we’re sure a few readers would have been happy to save some money with that firm’s product.

Here’s a short list of statistics for the five models we received:

Anyone who wants to see photographs of key design and connectivity features should have a look at In Pictures: Five Eight-Slot Cases For CrossFire And SLI.