All right guys, I beat on it till it finally submitted to my will! I tried newer versions of Ubuntu and even went down the windows path before I came back to the physical layer being the culprit.

I'm using the older style risers like Soothaa but have the newer USB ones on order. This I believe was the source of all my ailments. Anyhow, here's what I did to get it working.

MSI Z170a Gaming M5
Bios Revision: 1.D0
Settings:
HD Audio - Disabled
PCI Versions - Auto
Integrated Graphics - IGD
4G Decoding - Enabled

This is where I'd get 4 or 5 cards active on 6 installed. Or, 4 cards active on 7 installed.

So, I started creating jumpers for each of my 1x PCIe slots. With 7 cards installed, I have jumpers on the 2nd and 3rd 1x PCIe slots and a 16x riser on my 2nd 16x PCIe slot. Lastly, I've got a newer style USB riser on the last 16x slot.

I was scraping the bottom of the barrel on risers to get this board running and it shows. Anyhow, it's now pumping away with 7 active GPUs and I'll replace all of them once the new risers arrive.