I have a spare-parts NAS on a Z170 (Intel 6k/7k) motherboard with 8 SATA ports and 2 NVME slots - if I put an x2 SSD in the top slot it would disable two ports, and if it was an x4 it would disable four! Luckily the bottom m2 slot doesn’t conflict with any SATA ports, just an expansion card slot. (The board supports SATA Express even - did anything actually use that?)
SATA ports are far scarcer these days though and there’s more PCIE bandwidth available anyways, so it’s not surprising that there aren’t conflicts as often anymore.
SATA ports are far scarcer these days though and there’s more PCIE bandwidth available anyways, so it’s not surprising that there aren’t conflicts as often anymore.