A answer to your request, is that there seems to be some usage of PCI-e lanes by motherboard manufacturers… which can be assigned better. For example offers the Asrock 990FX Extreme6 2x actual PCIe x16 slots being fully used while the 3rd x16 slot can at max operate @ x8. The onboard M2 slot uses the same resources as the eSata 3 port. I dunno who ever made usage of those ports but it seems to me, that some of those resources are used for unnecessary items. The same seems to apply to the new X570 chipset, where nothing else then a gfx card can be inserted, without having to suffer a downscaling, of the gen 4 x16 slot? That is really ridiculous and at least a bridge chip should be implemented between 2 x16 slots and the motherboard/CPU. Then the other slot would be free to put in high throughput storage cards. Two onboard M2 slots are already fantastic while more then can be freely added, with riser expansion cards. I want gfx cards to run on x16 to be ensured in the first place. Even when there is no software available yet. I want to c things running how they are meant to, without compromising in stuff, that came with the package, that I could not reject. Free architecture, was what the PC concept was all about, if I&I remembered correctly. Otherwise we would all stil use…. Amiga’s? Namasté