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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2025
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…and still only two PCIe slots. Do you remember when you could slot four cards into your mainboard without going to a “Pro” or HEDT platform? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
I remember when 7 expansion slots was pretty normal. Of course, one would be your video card, one would be a graphics accelerator, one would be a sound card, one would be a modem, one would be an Ethernet NIC, and one would be a SCSI adapter. now a lot of that shit is either obsolete or built right into the motherboard.
It sounds to me that it's really targeted for music production and like, where you have a whole bunch of interfaces to connect like pads, keyboards, mixers, etc. In that case you don't really need a lot of PCIe slots. We don't really use PCIe for audio interfaces anymore since USB has gotten so fast.
VR sim racing. So, so many USB devices.
Oh yeah, good call. Or Star Citizen / MSFS sim pits.
That makes sense. I’m just sore because I had to upgrade to a somewhat unstable X870E board to get 4 slots for my main GPU, capture card, storage controller, and secondary GPU.
We're still doing secondary GPUs? What do you use it for? I haven't done SLI since my GTX660Ti's.
Video editing. I record 4k, 10-bit, 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, and the first nvidia consumer GPU that supports decoding that in hardware is the 5000-series. I have a 4090 and no desire to jump to a 5090. Swapping from a 7800X3D on a B650 board to a 9950X3D on an X870E and chucking an Arc A380 on there for encode/decode cost less than half of a 5090.
From what I've read,it's that the 870 chipset mandates a PCIe 5 slot which means less lanes for more slots.
And the tendency to provide numerous m.2 slots.
Give me an x4 slot and I can slide a m.2 adaptor in, but if it goes the other way, it's only by way of a janky hacky mess.
The CPU on that motherboard is going to be like "What do you want from me!?!?"
Also, the potential powerdrain is asking for stability issues.
We have had multiple slots for decades without problems. And you can get threadripper CPU/motherboards that require even more power yet have plenty of slots.
Imo the lack of slots is companies saving money.