Modern consumer Motherboards: Where did all the PCIe slots go?

[lemma]

@Dank_Vader

m.2 slots are all the rage nowadays so you won’t get more than 3 full-sized slots

There’s current gen desktop boards with four or five x16 mechanical slots. Just not from ASRock or Gigabyte. And, yeah, lots of x1 electrical slots. I think many the options tend to get overlooked because of expectations higher end boards will have more slots when the trend’s actually in the other direction.

	CPU slots	chipset slots	other slots
MSI B840-P	4x16	3x4, 3x1, 3x1, 3x1
MSI B840 Gaming Plus	4x16	3x4, 3x1, 3x1, 3x1
MSI B850 Gaming Plus	5x16	4x4, 3x1, 3x1
MSI B860M-A	5x16	4x4, 4x1, 4x1
MSI B860M Gaming Plus	5x16	4x4, 4x1, 4x1
MSI Pro B850-P	5x16	4x4, 3x1, 3x1
MSI Pro B860-P	5x16	4x4, 4x1, 4x1
MSI Pro X870-P	5x16	4x4, 3x1, 3x1
MSI Pro Z890-S	5x16, 4x4, 3x1	4x4
MSI X870 Gaming Plus	5x16	4x4, 3x1, 3x1
Asus Prime B840-Plus	4x16	3x4, 3x1, 3x1	3x1
Asus Prime B860-Plus	5x16	4x4, 4x1, 4x1, 4x1
Asus Prime X870-P	5x16	4x1, 4x1, 4x1
Asus Prime Z890-P	5x16	4x4, 4x4, 4x1
Asus Z890 AYW Gaming W	5x16	4x4, 4x4, 4x1

Plus other four and five slot options if not all of the slots need to be x16 mechanical. Personally I tend to like those more as there’s greater chances for two x4s or an x2.

@CircleTech

And don’t expect them to be appropriately spaced either.

They’re appropriately spaced for the primary market, which is three and four slot dGPUs. The 5.0 x4 CPU M.2 has to sit behind PCIe slot 1, so minimum slots 2, 3, 4, and 5 are for the first dGPU if a triple slot’s going to have intake clearance.

@CircleTech

remove some of the M.2 slots, then reintroduce them as PCIe x4 lanes instead

ASRock LiveMixers and at least five Z890s. Don’t seem to be boards like this with more than three slots, but that’s unsurprising as cards often take at least two slots in desktop form factors (if it’s a current gen one slot card probably an adjacent slot’s wanted for airflow).

@CircleTech

split up the PCIe gen 5.0 x16 slot for the GPU into two PCIe gen 5.0 x8 slots with a mux chip

Most X870E and some upper end Z890 boards do this, plus ASRock Taichis have offered x8/x8 for a while. x8/x4/x4’s not uncommon either, though at least one of the 5x4s is an M.2 on all the boards I know.

@ThatGuyB

I’m glad to see I’m not the only one noticing / complaining

This thread happens at least once a month, usually closer to every couple weeks.