SLI on ITX motherboards with PCIe Bifurcation

LukeD

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Jun 29, 2016
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Here is the tutorial for injecting SLI certificates into ITX motherboards with PCIe Bifurcation capabilities.
There's no need for silly driver workarounds, works with Nvidia drivers out of the box.

PDF: LINK

UPDATE: I can confirm that the process is exactly the same for z390 boards and someone also validated that x470/x570 also work

UPDATE2: Asrock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac includes an SLI certificate by default (no need to inject for this board)


I'm leaving the below for reference but its just personal notes. Not required for Intel anymore.

For Intel the process is slightly different because the UEFI / BIOS is in a different format. I'm trying to find the tutorial file I wrote up, however if I don't, here are the high level steps for Intel boards:

dump aml from z270 donor board using clover (f4)
convert aml to dsl using:
iasl.exe -oa dsdt.aml

Open dsdt.dsl using MaciASL
Copy SLI license key to clipboard

dump aml from z270 recipient board using clover (f4)
convert aml to dsl using:
iasl.exe -oa dsdt.aml

Open dsdt.dsl using MaciASL
Paste in SLI license key
Exit

use iasl to convert dsl to aml using:
iasl.exe -oa -f dsdt.dsl
 
Last edited:

LukeD

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No I haven't. I posted about this in the past but never got around to posting it up.
I had a few people contact me via twitter asking for the instructions, hence I'm posting them up.
I had a full guide written for z170/z270 boards as well, but I left in on my NAS in Australia, so its unattainable for me in the foreseeable future.
 

Windfall

Shrink Ray Wielder
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Nov 14, 2017
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No I haven't. I posted about this in the past but never got around to posting it up.
I had a few people contact me via twitter asking for the instructions, hence I'm posting them up.
I had a full guide written for z170/z270 boards as well, but I left in on my NAS in Australia, so its unattainable for me in the foreseeable future.

That is mildly disappointing, but shouldn't be too much of a roadblock.
 

LukeD

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I can also report something VERY interesting ...
Looks like ASrock listens to their enthusiasts needs.... SLI is enabled with a Temp key on the z390 ITX motherboard out of the box:

 
Last edited:

ermac318

King of Cable Management
Mar 10, 2019
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I can also report something VERY interesting ...
Looks like ASrock listens to their enthusiasts needs.... SLI is enabled with a Temp key on the z390 ITX motherboard out of the box:

Luke, is that the z390 Phantom Gaming ITX board? If so, how could I see if mine has it?
 

LukeD

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This is the board: LINK (Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac)

@ermac318 You can check by download AIDA64 Extreme and once you open AIDA do the following:

Report -> Report Wizard -> Next
Hardware-related pages -> Plain Text -> Finish

Once the report generates, do a text search for SLI.

If it shows up it means the certificate is there.

 
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ermac318

King of Cable Management
Mar 10, 2019
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This is the board: LINK (Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac)

@ermac318 You can check by download AIDA64 Extreme and once you open AIDA do the following:

Report -> Report Wizard -> Next
Hardware-related pages -> Plain Text -> Finish

Once the report generates, do a text search for SLI.

If it shows up it means the certificate is there.

Well I'll be damned, there it is. That's quite the find!
 

TristanDuboisOLG

Average Stuffer
May 10, 2018
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I can also report something VERY interesting ...
Looks like ASrock listens to their enthusiasts needs.... SLI is enabled with a Temp key on the z390 ITX motherboard out of the box:

Hell yeah they do! I was actually the one that called them up and requested a custom x99e-ITX bios last year. Even after this long they still were happy to make one for me! I love Asrock! ♥
 

fabio

Shrink Ray Wielder
Apr 6, 2016
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This is the board: LINK (Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac)

@ermac318 You can check by download AIDA64 Extreme and once you open AIDA do the following:

Report -> Report Wizard -> Next
Hardware-related pages -> Plain Text -> Finish

Once the report generates, do a text search for SLI.

If it shows up it means the certificate is there.

Ho is possible that on my Asus X570 Crosshair Impact DTX the certificate is present as well??? Ho can I SLI if the boards doesn't support bifurcation??

That's curious!
Capture.JPG
 

LukeD

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You can’t SLI if the board doesn’t support bifurcation.
You need both things .... bifurcation and sli certificate for SLI to work
 

ermac318

King of Cable Management
Mar 10, 2019
655
510
You can’t SLI if the board doesn’t support bifurcation.
You need both things .... bifurcation and sli certificate for SLI to work
In theory you could get a riser with a PCIe Switch... but I dunno if that exists.
 
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ermac318

King of Cable Management
Mar 10, 2019
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Anyone know if there’s a list of z490 itx boards that are sli certified?
None of them are officially. It appears that some z390 boards have "temp" keys installed. No one would know unless the bought the board and did the testing that LukeD described. Maybe ask some folks in build threads that have a 10th gen CPU to run the test?

@LukeD - do you have any indication of what other boards might have SLI keys?
 

xkruz

Average Stuffer
Apr 1, 2020
61
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Hello, Can I use SLI certificate from different brand? Like asus x570 sli cert for gigabyte x570 or even asrock z390 for gigabyte x570?

Since i have asrock z390 itx, asus x570itx and gigabyte x570i itx ?‍♂️
 
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AP2

Airflow Optimizer
Feb 1, 2017
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safe to say, if a board is bifurcation ready all we need to do is inject the SLI key from a donor board (if SLI temp key is not there) ?
 

DrHudacris

King of Cable Management
Jul 20, 2019
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Very odd problem that I'm running into... DSDTEditor refuses to open any AML/DSL file I throw at it. Tried extracting/dumping AMLs from 3 motherboards now, and even tried running the DSDT editor batch file on 2 different machines, and in all cases I get "Unmatched brackets, tree not updated" error, and AE_ALREADY_EXISTS

Anyone know what could be going on? It's gotta be an issue with the DSDT editor right? It's somehow not dissassembling/parsing the AML correctly?