TBF that's usually my frustration with any consumer level chip. I get it takes die space and power, but even high-end non-HEDT platforms still cap out at just enough PCIe lanes for the common loadout of "One GPU at x16, One SSD at x4".

Which, fine, I get it that most people don't need or want more than that, but I shouldn't have to jump up 3x in power draw and heat and 5x in cost to go to HEDT to get far more lanes than I actually need. I'm lookin for enough PCIe for a couple of SSDs, maybe a third, and I dunno, more than one goddamn slot to be wired to my CPU without compromises? Every ATX motherboard for consumers brags about all their slots but they're all only x4, squeezed through the PCH's 4 lanes. Just because I have a high bandwidth capture card, a 10/25/40/100Gb NIC, and a GPU doesn't mean I want to only give one of them far more bandwidth than it needs to the CPU and compromise on the rest.

I need like, 32 lanes. Not 64 in a Threadripper. Not 128828182 or whatever comes on a brand new $10,000k EPYC, I need 32, and don't waste em on a bunch fo flaky USB crap I can't use. Don't give me a fucking oculink port. I want to use the slots. That i have. In my computer. That I can screw the card into securely and power without an additional power supply. I can't be the only one.

It doesn't help that nics usually are not available in narrow pcie cards. PCIe 5 x1 is 32 Gbps (afaik) so it should be able to handle 25GbE, but good luck finding such nic. Either you get some 400GbE pcie5 monster or some ancient pcie3 25gbe card

[dead]