ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming ITX/TB3

[Camm]

Gotcha I forgot all those extra lanes from the chipset.

Given the price and positioning as a "gaming" board I would not be surprised if they withheld any extra engineering required to add more M.2 slots and are possibly saving that for a higher-end board at a later date. It's not easy to find space for M.2 slots, especially when the chipset requires so much space with the cooling fan.

I know ASUS has experimented with several vertical riser card mounting styles in the past like you mentioned but they all seem to have drawbacks and none have been popular enough to stick around for more than 1 generation. I don't even know how you would fit essentially a third DIMM slot on this board and have space to run the traces.

I agree, but that being said, I feel its holding mini-itx back somewhat, give people enough storage in a small format and you can stop thinking about hard drive placement in a case without feeling compromised.