[fomine3]

I have opposite bemoaning for recent motherboards: only one PCIe slot (x16) is directly connected to CPU (not via chipset). It's useless to have PCIe 5.0 x16 slot even for average consumer because 4.0 x8 is still enough for modern GPU for gaming and even if it become not enough, 5.0 x8 should be enough for foreseeable future. Lack of high bandwidth dedicated PCIe slots for other than GPU makes the PC less expandable, e.g. video capture, another GPU (not for SLI), 10GbE, HBA, etc...

[ziml77]

I hate it too. The allocation of PCIe lanes is garbage unless you spend $500 on a motherboard. We should have had the lanes divided better once we hit 4.0 speeds. At 5.0 speeds, it's absurd that 16 full-speed lanes would go to a single slot except for very specialist scenarios.

[wtallis]

Part of the problem is that it's quite difficult to get a PCIe 5.0 signal to travel further than the first slot while keeping the motherboard price reasonable by consumer standards.

[nfriedly]

I suspect that AMD & Intel push the motherboard manufactures in that direction. You can certainly get more high-speed PCIe slots if you get one of the higher-end product lines (Threadripper, Xeon, etc.)

[formerly_proven]

Flexible I/O is one of those things Motherboard manufacturers reserve for the upper price ranges, unfortunately.

[fomine3]

Yeah sadly now. PCIe x8/x8 or x8/x4/x4 (bifurcation) from CPU was common in standard priced board like Z170X-UD3, but now requires mid-high priced board. More flexible slots (dynamic switch by PLX chip) is always for highends.