I hope this topic isn’t dead, because I also would be FAR more interested in getting this motherboard if that slot wasn’t closed off… at the moment I’m looking at PCIe 4x 5.0 risers that could open the slot for me… turns out I don’t think those exist yet… you are literally better off using an M.2 → PCIe 4x 5.0 riser which is ridiculous when the board literally has the slot… and no “stock” case easily supports M.2 → PCIe risers…
that said, I guess nice there there at least is a solution… even if it has to be incredibly janky
Edit: I guess the other options is that you can buy a half height 4x to 16x adapter… which seems even worse.. I wonder if you can do 4x → 16x adapter → 16x riser…? but I have concerns about signal integrity and power when chaining risers like that with 5.0
Really I just want the ability to potentially add a secondary gpu down the line for passing through to VMs. Because I would use this platform for linux… but 2 specific programs I use regularly require windows and a GPU and I will not dual boot.
Edit edit: I did see the video about conforming to the PCIe standard and I did see Level1Techs’s that included the blurb about it only providing 25 watts. I do just still find that closed slot frustrating since a 5.0 4x → 16x powered riser doesn’t exist (yet)