Z890/X870 feature dreamlist

[TheLostSwede]

Interesting, brought a mouse not long ago and its type A, same with new sound equipment. Likewise I got the latest elgato USB capture model and also type A (ok on this one its A and C, comes with both cables). Going to use C for the elgato then so I have an extra A port.

Wireless mouse, my old one had micro USB...

If I ever do need more type C, I can get a pci express card, with that said though, there is nothing stopping board vendors adding more type C, just that I think they can do it without removing type A, every board I have owned always has empty space on the back plate.

You don't even need to do that if you have a spare USB 3.0 header on your board, that would give you one additional port with a bracket. Keep in mind that each "full" USB-C port needs "two lanes" of USB, i.e. two USB-A ports equals one USB-C port. As such, it's unlikely that we'll see a lot more USB-C ports until the chipsets support more USB interfaces.

My SATA drives say hi. Currently between 2 systems using 12 drives. SATA runs cooler/less power, more convenient to install/remove, and can have higher capacity.

Good for you, I have four in my NAS.
However, if you look at all the recently released motherboards and the chipset specs, SATA is dying a slow death and in a generation or two, we're most likely down to no more than two SATA ports.

 

[datnoz]

SATA is largely dead, expect no more than 4-ports on most board for this gen.

Have 15 sata devices on 2 PCs, and they're not dead, they run cooler, can hold more data, are slower yes but they also are cheaper.

 

[Dorek]

I would like perhaps more realtek lan and good audio chip setup.

 

[evernessince]

Have 15 sata devices on 2 PCs, and they're not dead, they run cooler, can hold more data, are slower yes but they also are cheaper.

SATA hasn't been a cheaper option in awhile. Look at pricing on Amazon, both bottom out at around $50 - $60 for 1TB.

It's not higher capacity either. Consumer SATA tops out at 8TB as does M.2. Max capacity is equal. The only consumer 8TB SATA drive is QLC to boot. If you consider enterprise M.2 and SATA options, M.2 wins. You can find 15.36TB M.2 22110 drives. Good luck finding that capacity with a SATA interface. You can find 8TB TLC enterprise SATA drives though but you'll pay a premium for them as compared to PCIe based drives as they are considered legacy. You are paying more for less in essence and are only there for older systems that only have SATA.

SATA runs cooler by virtue of providing a fraction of the performance. If you look at efficiency charts though modern M.2 drives provide about twice the energy efficiency as compared to contemporary SATA drives. If you want an M.2 that runs cool simply buy any PCIe 3.0 drive or any mid-range or lower PCIe 4.0 drive. That's conicidentally the drives that are going to be cheap anyways.

There are also drawbacks to SATA drives. They tend to use older NAND chips or chips of lower layer counts, which typically results in worse latency, performance, endurance, and power characteristics. Compare the endurance of many SATA drives to M.2 drives.

I would consider SATA dead. Manufacturers have moved on to PCIe based interfaces.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Have 15 sata devices on 2 PCs, and they're not dead, they run cooler, can hold more data, are slower yes but they also are cheaper.

Yes, because you already have them...
My point was that SATA as a motherboard feature is dead, or at least very much dying a slow death and have been for a long time.

I would like perhaps more realtek lan and good audio chip setup.

We should definitely be seeing board with Realtek's 5 Gbps Ethernet chips that they were showing last year at Computex.

Realtek's 5 Gbps Ethernet Solutions Will Reduce Cost and Power Draw Significantly

Realtek has decided to take consumer Ethernet speeds to a new level later this year with a family of 5 Gbps parts that are unlike anything its competitors have announced so far. The RTL8126-CG PCIe 3.0 x1 controller is a tiny QFN56 chip that measures 8 by 8 millimetres and consumes up to 1.7...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Dr. Dro]

I agree with the sentiment on SATA, it's also been my opinion for a while, of course I was met with resistance every time I brought it up. With easy to setup NAS mini servers or high-speed, inexpensive USB docks there is no longer a need for obsolete SATA internals, whether optical, mechanical or solid state. 2 ports should cover any niche use.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

I agree with the sentiment on SATA, it's also been my opinion for a while, of course I was met with resistance every time I brought it up. With easy to setup NAS mini servers or high-speed, inexpensive USB docks there is no longer a need for obsolete SATA internals, whether optical, mechanical or solid state. 2 ports should cover any niche use.

I don't even look any more how many sata ports a board has honestly I only care about m.2 slots these days every gen I get a board with one extra lol.

I have a sabrent 4 bay hdd enclosure I've been using for a while with 32TB with no issues.

 

[Pasi123]

My dreamlist would include at least 8 SATA ports, a lot of PCIe slots, a minimum of 4 DIMM slots and a PS/2 port for keyboard. No need for many USB Type-C ports since nothing that I have uses it, except for two of my phones but those are USB 2.0

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

Not enough PCIe slots.

you are never going to get more than two on a Mainstream consumer board anymore since PC gamers have decided to kill off multi-gpu this will be a thing of the past.
I really hate lack of choices for anything anymore.

 

[nomdeplume]

However, if you look at all the recently released motherboards and the chipset specs, SATA is dying a slow death and in a generation or two, we're most likely down to no more than two SATA ports.

Last I checked PSU are still shipping with a long dead connector.
SATA SSD should be an incredibly apparent clue how dead those SATA ports are.
USB [+30 variants in 5 years] is suffering death after death after rebirth to die afresh.

---

^^^^^ a straight line with no dashes or failures to connect together all expected unaltered performance claims.
Simple straightforward option lacking unwanted blipping lights or coloration
1 channel fan w/standarized connector capable of powering and reading individual fan PWM + 1 intelligent CPU fan in new standard fan connector (1-4 fans + pump w/individual control).
2 RAM slots
mATX options ↑ value ↓ costs

 

[JWNoctis]

Last I checked PSU are still shipping with a long dead connector.
SATA SSD should be an incredibly apparent clue how dead those SATA ports are.
USB [+30 variants in 5 years] is suffering death after death after rebirth to die afresh.

---

^^^^^ a straight line with no dashes or failures to connect together all expected unaltered performance claims.
Simple straightforward option lacking unwanted blipping lights or coloration
1 channel fan w/standarized connector capable of powering and reading individual fan PWM + 1 intelligent CPU fan in new standard fan connector (1-4 fans + pump w/individual control).
2 RAM slots
mATX options ↑ value ↓ costs

You mean that FDD Berg connector off one of the Molex cables? 4-pin Molex itself is more or less dead these days, but some expansion cards still need them. But that connector was surprising.

I'd say at least 4 SATA connectors will stay, so long as motherboard chipsets retained them and claim RAID10 support.

 

[nomdeplume]

You mean that FDD Berg connector off one of the Molex cables? 4-pin Molex itself is more or less dead these days, but some expansion cards still need them. But that connector was surprising.

I'd say at least 4 SATA connectors will stay, so long as motherboard chipsets retained them and claim RAID10 support.

I meant Molex which just refuses to die out. Should've been specific even if it is the one cable everyone normally complains about still being present.

Current build uses a Molex to dual adapter for a modern slim DVD drive.

 

[AleXXX666]

My take is that for regular consumer use the Z and X chipsets are overpriced and overkill. The B-series is absolutely a better deal and more than enough in 95% of cases.
So my dream, if we are to overcome this, is to stop making Z and X motherboards have such an unreasonable premium unless they are doing something really out there (i.e extreme OC boards or an expensive 10 gig NIC).

"NIC" users use some server/expansion stuff better than this marketing glowing/flowing BS non-sense

 

[TheLostSwede]

@Dristun looks like ASRock heard you with regards to USB-C ports.

ASRock Z890 Taichi Aqua comes with ten USB Type-C ports, two being Thunderbolt ports

There are no USB Type-A ports on the board!

www.tomshardware.com

 

[rv8000]

Let’s start with actually having a tachyon, unify, apex, or formula board for X870. Anything else would just be a cherry on top.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

@Dristun looks like ASRock heard you with regards to USB-C ports.

ASRock Z890 Taichi Aqua comes with ten USB Type-C ports, two being Thunderbolt ports

There are no USB Type-A ports on the board!

www.tomshardware.com

That's pretty sweet now hand over 1000 usd for the luxury of no USB type a ports lol.

I've always liked the aesthetics of Aqua boards but the price has always been steep.

 

[Dristun]

@Dristun looks like ASRock heard you with regards to USB-C ports.

ASRock Z890 Taichi Aqua comes with ten USB Type-C ports, two being Thunderbolt ports

There are no USB Type-A ports on the board!

www.tomshardware.com

Crazy stuff. Outside of my price range though haha, it's probably a $1000+ board. But! - if my eyes don't deceive me, the "standard" Z890 Taichi has three ports+headers.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Crazy stuff. Outside of my price range though haha, it's probably a $1000+ board. But! - if my eyes don't deceive me, the Z890 Taichi has three ports+headers.

Better pics

ASRock next-gen Z890 Taichi Aqua motherboard doesn't have a single USB Type-A port - VideoCardz.com

No USB Type-A here ASRock next-gen Intel motherboard shows an interesting design choice. ASRock Z890 Taichi Aqua, Source: @OLISPEC The company is showcasing its broad portfolio of Intel Z890 and AMD X870 motherboards at Computex. Interestingly, Intel has forbidden its partners from advertising...

videocardz.com

Also, 5 Gbps and 10 Gbps Ethernet. The only "let down" is the screw in WiFi connectors.

 

[chrcoluk]

Turns out the elgato hd60x actually only has a type C to type A cable, so I still dont own a device thats designed to use a type c port out of the box, since it is high bandwidth though and it will gain me a port I have ordered a type c to type c 10gbps cable to use with it.

That asrock board posted above would be a nightmare lol, I would need 5 type a to type c adaptors or new cables to use on it.

My dreamlist would include at least 8 SATA ports, a lot of PCIe slots, a minimum of 4 DIMM slots and a PS/2 port for keyboard. No need for many USB Type-C ports since nothing that I have uses it, except for two of my phones but those are USB 2.0

Yeah apparently asrock (and some others) think these devices are everywhere, even my phones come with type c to type a cable, same with brand new controllers. Everyone is assuming you plugging something into a type A port, so I expect changes from the motherboards are to push the industry in to change rather than reacting to existing change.

I also dont fancy adding a dozen heaty m.2 drives at ridiculous $ per TB in my system either, SATA still has its place and given the ports are so tiny and low cost to place on a board, there is no reason to reduce them really. A $500+ motherboard saving about half a dollar in manufacturing. I also like sliding drives in and out of bays, rather than dealing with fiddly m.2 connectors in a built system.

Good for you, I have four in my NAS.
However, if you look at all the recently released motherboards and the chipset specs, SATA is dying a slow death and in a generation or two, we're most likely down to no more than two SATA ports.

Intel actually recently increased the port count on the chipset from 6 to 8 so it looks like they werent on the same wavelength as the board vendors, and luckily is still some boards with plenty of ports, the problem comes when every single model is stripped down.

Its very likely market segmentation combined with cost cutting, restricting the ways a consumer board can be used to make it as a difficult as possible for it to be used as a server use case. There is people on the net who have reported sticking with old builds so they can keep their storage setup, there is a disconnect between board vendors and "some" consumers, but the board vendors are in a position where they can manipulate consumers behaviour (and then claim they were reacting to it).

 

[FoulOnWhite]

Reliability like my z690, which has worked flawlessly for nearly 3 years is all i want.

 

[DaemonForce]

For X870 and X970 I want to see more of a compacting of mainboard parts and features but using less troublesome mainstream parts than what we've had the past decade.

Mini-ITX boards with HDMI/dual DP.
SFF boards with lots of USB3/4 and a single HDMI out.
Micro-ATX boards lots of USB3/4, HDMI/DP and 2.5/10GbE networking, possible 10GbE SFP options.
I don't care about full size ATX or SSEB.
Less useless wireless connections all around unless optioned by a key card.
In fact, a clear divorce of Wi-Fi and BT is probably necessary at this point.
Can delete 3 audio ports since most of us do HDMI/DP passthru anyway, results in more rear I/O space.
Maybe max the sata count to 1-2 for small boards and 3-4 on larger ones. If we need an 8+sata behemoth we'll use 970/B450M/X570 (server duty).

We need better chipset+cooling arrangement, period. What I deal with on X570 means no real consistent cooling or peripherals until retired. HS/WB options pl0x.
Better PCI-E arrangement in general. Making proper use of board surface area to load up single/dual NVMe and two or three PCI-E slots is a must.
Less defective PCI-E slots, meaning better overall QA testing is needed. Ask me how fun it is to use a cool board for ~5 years and upgrade only to find "that slot don't like it"

Clean power connectors, decent VRMs, good topology, is the bare minimum. We don't really need much but need to start pushing the bandwidth envelope on some parts.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Intel actually recently increased the port count on the chipset from 6 to 8 so it looks like they werent on the same wavelength as the board vendors, and luckily is still some boards with plenty of ports, the problem comes when every single model is stripped down.

Recently? Hasn't Intel had eight lanes that can do SATA for years now?
This is the Z690 chipset, but it's similar enough to Z790. It's highly unlikely that a board maker would "waste" four PCIe 4.0 lanes on SATA, which means you get no more than four on most boards. Some might get six. If I remember right, Z790 got four more PCIe 4.0 over Z690, so less of an issue there perhaps.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/attachments/2-png.223846/

Its very likely market segmentation combined with cost cutting, restricting the ways a consumer board can be used to make it as a difficult as possible for it to be used as a server use case. There is people on the net who have reported sticking with old builds so they can keep their storage setup, there is a disconnect between board vendors and "some" consumers, but the board vendors are in a position where they can manipulate consumers behaviour (and then claim they were reacting to it).

No, that's not it. Look at the picture above and you'll see why SATA ports are being cut. Due to the flexible I/O that both Intel and AMD has gone for, rather than fixed function I/O, they have to chose between PCIe lanes or SATA, where PCIe lanes win every day. I guess you can blame reviewers to a degree, but also the M.2 standard, as most chipsets don't have a sufficient amount of PCIe lanes to provide support for four drives, which most people expect these days.
My NAS is over six years old, but it has nothing to do with more SATA ports, as it only has four drives. However, I don't need anything more powerful and swapping out the hardware in it would be a real waste of money.

For X870 and X970 I want to see more of a compacting of mainboard parts and features but using less troublesome mainstream parts than what we've had the past decade.

Mini-ITX boards with HDMI/dual DP.
SFF boards with lots of USB3/4 and a single HDMI out.
Micro-ATX boards lots of USB3/4, HDMI/DP and 2.5/10GbE networking, possible 10GbE SFP options.
I don't care about full size ATX or SSEB.
Less useless wireless connections all around unless optioned by a key card.
In fact, a clear divorce of Wi-Fi and BT is probably necessary at this point.
Can delete 3 audio ports since most of us do HDMI/DP passthru anyway, results in more rear I/O space.
Maybe max the sata count to 1-2 for small boards and 3-4 on larger ones. If we need an 8+sata behemoth we'll use 970/B450M/X570 (server duty).

We need better chipset+cooling arrangement, period. What I deal with on X570 means no real consistent cooling or peripherals until retired. HS/WB options pl0x.
Better PCI-E arrangement in general. Making proper use of board surface area to load up single/dual NVMe and two or three PCI-E slots is a must.
Less defective PCI-E slots, meaning better overall QA testing is needed. Ask me how fun it is to use a cool board for ~5 years and upgrade only to find "that slot don't like it"

Clean power connectors, decent VRMs, good topology, is the bare minimum. We don't really need much but need to start pushing the bandwidth envelope on some parts.

Unfortunately, this isn't going to happen, as the chipset is staying the same, so you have exactly the same limitations for whatever comes out this year.
Time will tell if AMD takes a different approach in the future or not.

Also, if you want better, smaller boards, it's too late to lobby the motherboard makers for this generation, as the boards are mostly done already.
You'd have to get at least 50k signatures if you're going to be asking for something specific, or no-one will care at the board makers.

Sorry to crush your dreams.

 

[DaemonForce]

It's highly unlikely that a board maker would "waste" four PCIe 4.0 lanes on SATA, which means you get no more than four on most boards. Some might get six. If I remember right, Z790 got four more PCIe 4.0 over Z690, so less of an issue there perhaps.

It's a nice square number so I see it happening. Happened before on AMD stuff. Juggling lanes to choose +4 sata or +1 (split resource) nvme has become the fool's errand and possibly the reason I can't get a board to post with a top slotted full size g4x16 accelerator without error codes. Does that make sense? No and I'm not ready for the mental gymnastics to make it make sense. The main issue has become "does this even work with my board?" and the new default answer is no, hell no. This needs to get fixed before everything else but it likely won't. Imagine someone with dual M.2 and they want to populate every sata as well. Not gonna happen? Then we don't really need half of one of these types.

I guess you can blame reviewers to a degree, but also the M.2 standard, as most chipsets don't have a sufficient amount of PCIe lanes to provide support for four drives, which most people expect these days.
My NAS is over six years old, but it has nothing to do with more SATA ports, as it only has four drives. However, I don't need anything more powerful and swapping out the hardware in it would be a real waste of money.

I'm not going to go after reviewers since they're pretty much how I'm able to pay attention to any tech news these days. M.2 is the standard and I want to push M.2 RAID. It's the default feature in mainstream boards like the X570 TUF and most ROG/Asia specific hotrod boards with good VRMs and cooling. Most of us need maybe 1 or 2 sata and that's it.

Booting from a chipdisk makes it a bit cutthroat but solid. I haven't had any problems with it outside the default (unusable) nVidia storage drivers.
Most gamers don't have a server or do multi-PC so they don't have a storage policy. They just think haha funny M.2 go BRRRRR and that's okay.
They tend to use HDDs on main. I don't because of storage policy. Single M.2 and maybe a sata. That's it. These are SSDs. When I need more, iSCSI.

My SFF NAS is ~15 years old with a pair of sata 3gb connections that are used waaaaaay beyond what was intended or even imagined in the pre-EFI era.
Incidentally, I don't have virtualization available, which is a gripe of antique CPUs. Everything I do here could be obsoleted by any generic sub$140 Dell "Treasure Box" PC.
Do you remember those? You should. They're basically every old i7-7700T or i5-8500T office PC from vol/gov contracts that retired but are still too good for the junk pile.
The GTX1080Ti isn't the only legendary product in semi-recent history. Sometimes it's the entire PC and all it has to do is exist.

the chipset is staying the same, so you have exactly the same limitations for whatever comes out this year.

Sorry to crush your dreams.

Neg. ✖ I'll wait for all the cool junk to get dumped on AliExpress and random parts of the Asianet.
Intel H61 is still the king and won't disappear for another decade but seeing how there's no competition anymore, we really need to start pushing for specialty boards.
Like, there is no excuse for not having them at a good price. We're just sitting on our laurels.

 

[chrcoluk]

Recently? Hasn't Intel had eight lanes that can do SATA for years now?
This is the Z690 chipset, but it's similar enough to Z790. It's highly unlikely that a board maker would "waste" four PCIe 4.0 lanes on SATA, which means you get no more than four on most boards. Some might get six. If I remember right, Z790 got four more PCIe 4.0 over Z690, so less of an issue there perhaps.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/attachments/2-png.223846/

No, that's not it. Look at the picture above and you'll see why SATA ports are being cut. Due to the flexible I/O that both Intel and AMD has gone for, rather than fixed function I/O, they have to chose between PCIe lanes or SATA, where PCIe lanes win every day. I guess you can blame reviewers to a degree, but also the M.2 standard, as most chipsets don't have a sufficient amount of PCIe lanes to provide support for four drives, which most people expect these days.
My NAS is over six years old, but it has nothing to do with more SATA ports, as it only has four drives. However, I don't need anything more powerful and swapping out the hardware in it would be a real waste of money.


Unfortunately, this isn't going to happen, as the chipset is staying the same, so you have exactly the same limitations for whatever comes out this year.
Time will tell if AMD takes a different approach in the future or not.

Also, if you want better, smaller boards, it's too late to lobby the motherboard makers for this generation, as the boards are mostly done already.
You'd have to get at least 50k signatures if you're going to be asking for something specific, or no-one will care at the board makers.

Sorry to crush your dreams.

There is no way to lobby them, the board vendors talk to review media, and perhaps to other companies like SSD manufacturers, CPU manufacturers etc. then make decisions based on that, I have never seen a motherboard manufacturer ask consumers for feedback on board design. Between them the future of board design is decided and consumers buy what's offered. Reviewers help in this practice by conveniently downplaying or not mentioning regressions and up playing new design changes.

In terms of the 8 SATA ports it was mentioned in a Z690 review I read that it was a change Intel introduced for the chipset, moving from 6 to 8 ports, e.g. Z370 the intel chipset only offers 6 ports, and boards offering 8 ports had to use ASMedia.

I dont know why you feel the need to say comments like "Sorry to crush your dreams." it does come across as childish, its as if you talking down to me, and you are in a circle with the board vendors, but its not a good thing for a TPU staff member to make those sort of comments. It gives the impression you have bias in favour of the board vendors.

But my opinion hasnt changed, if any new board doesnt offer what I want, then its quite simple, I wont buy it and wont upgrade. Luckily I found a board on Z690, 8 Intel SATA ports and reasonable amount of PCIe (Steel legend Z690) so it wasnt a blocker. But if no such board appears on future generations, then I wont upgrade.
You can use PCIe slots as NVME slots, so a board with say 3 4x/16x slots and 3 M.2 is just as good as a board with say just 1 16x slot and 5 M.2, the former is superior as its more flexible.

If you think I am being nonsensical about market segmentation, I dont know how you have come to that conclusion, we have had market segmentation for decades, its classic practice. Why we didnt have SCSI on consumer boards, why we didnt get SAS either. No U.2 for same reason, trim down the PCIe slots/lanes prevents datacentre type builds on consumer boards, ECC another example. I am surprised its even put into question as its so obvious.

For reference I can have 4 NVME drives on this board without any SATA ports being disabled. It really is a nice board, a considerable upgrade on my previous one for i/o. It is possible to do.

The 2 spare 4 lane PCIe slots dont disable anything on the board just bandwidth contention, and the first 2 M.2 also dont.

 

[TheLostSwede]

There is no way to lobby them, the board vendors talk to review media, and perhaps to other companies like SSD manufacturers, CPU manufacturers etc. then make decisions based on that, I have never seen a motherboard manufacturer ask consumers for feedback on board design. Between them the future of board design is decided and consumers buy what's offered. Reviewers help in this practice by conveniently downplaying or not mentioning regressions and up playing new design changes.

Sure there is, but it would require at least 50-100k people to get together and send in a proper petition. They absolutely do not listen to media, even if they pretend to. I can tell you this from personal experience when I have suggested simple, low cost additions, they've smiled and been nice to my face and then ignored it. This happen to everyone that make individual suggestions to them. And why would they ask? They've done this stuff since the 1980's, they know best, or at least that's their mentality. Reviewers help nothing and these days a lot of reviews are paid for anyhow and can't really be called reviews. TPU and a handful of other publications don't do that, but a lot do.

In terms of the 8 SATA ports it was mentioned in a Z690 review I read that it was a change Intel introduced for the chipset, moving from 6 to 8 ports, e.g. Z370 the intel chipset only offers 6 ports, and boards offering 8 ports had to use ASMedia.

View attachment 353941

Up to. And again, this is due to a change to the HSIO and you'd end up losing PCIe lanes in favour of SATA ports, which only Asrock has done afaik.

I dont know why you feel the need to say comments like "Sorry to crush your dreams." it does come across as childish, its as if you talking down to me, and you are in a circle with the board vendors, but its not a good thing for a TPU staff member to make those sort of comments. It gives the impression you have bias in favour of the board vendors.

Huh? I have no such thing, I'm simply trying to rely the reality of things here. Unless a lot of their potential customers get together and demand something, none of this will ever happen,. due to the board makers knowing best, in their own minds. See above.

But my opinion hasnt changed, if any new board doesnt offer what I want, then its quite simple, I wont buy it and wont upgrade. Luckily I found a board on Z690, 8 Intel SATA ports and reasonable amount of PCIe (Steel legend Z690) so it wasnt a blocker. But if no such board appears on future generations, then I wont upgrade.
You can use PCIe slots as NVME slots, so a board with say 3 4x/16x slots and 3 M.2 is just as good as a board with say just 1 16x slot and 5 M.2, the former is superior as its more flexible.

But those extra SATA ports ended up costing PCIe lanes that someone else would've preferred. I'm not saying board makers shouldn't cater to different needs, but let's try this in a different way. It's not the product managers, board design engineers or even marketing that decides the features at these companies, its sales. They have them make what the sales team can sell. The sales teams at these companies are imho glorified telephone operators. They always downsell, instead of upsell, which makes them terrible sales people. How do I know this? I've worked most of my life in the industry, many years as a tech journalist (started at a big UK magazine), but I have also worked for the tech companies, even if it in general has been quite brief stints, but I have also done freelance work for some of them. I have under various forms worked for MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, Cooler Master and QNAP, as well as various other small Taiwanese companies. The sales people are the same across the board, yet hold almost all the power, as they're the ones bringing in the money. The only exception from this rule is that someone high up in management wants a specific thing or product done.

If you think I am being nonsensical about market segmentation, I dont know how you have come to that conclusion, we have had market segmentation for decades, its classic practice. Why we didnt have SCSI on consumer boards, why we didnt get SAS either. No U.2 for same reason, trim down the PCIe slots/lanes prevents datacentre type builds on consumer boards, ECC another example. I am surprised its even put into question as its so obvious.

I don't. But you don't sit on the inside knowledge of the industry that I have. Asus actually did some M.2 to U.2 adapters, but no-one made drives, so... SCSI was easy enough to add back in the days and there were one or two consumer boards with it built in as well. ECC was never really intended for consumers though, but DDR5 has at least partially solved that and it looks like DDR6 will improve on that.

However, what you're asking for, isn't what these companies sales people are capable of selling (see above), which I why it won't happen unless you and another 49,999 people get together and tell them that this product will sell.

For reference I can have 4 NVME drives on this board without any SATA ports being disabled. It really is a nice board, a considerable upgrade on my previous one for i/o. It is possible to do.

The 2 spare 4 lane PCIe slots dont disable anything on the board just bandwidth contention, and the first 2 M.2 also dont.

But you lost PCIe slots, which someone else wanted and so on. I think you need to look up the HSIO layout, as that would be more PCIe lanes than the chipset and CPU can deliver. Something has to be shared, maybe it's your x16 slot, as that was the case on a lot of Intel board.