The point of this article is that the motherboard's distribution of relatively faster pcie5 lanes to devices and their physical slot sizing/numbers are currently inappropriate and limit the number of devices one can attach to a PC. This is not an invalid claim, or even limited to pcie 5.
All modern desktop motherboards have very limited expansion IO available compared to a similar class motherboard from a decade ago. Part of this is that all the IO protocols now are so fast you can't just have 8x nvme storage hook-ups (like you'd have 8x sata in the past) in the space of a modern board's controller chip(s) and the CPU. IO has grown faster than processing. And sharing pcie with GPUs makes this even worse.
The market has changed and desktop PCs assembled by humans with the expectation of adding new parts later is relatively smaller. And a smaller consideration is given to them versus the big (server/mobile) markets needs for pcie. This probably won't change but I think an article pointing it out as a bad thing for desktop computers is welcome. Maybe some high end mobo manufacturer (Asus?) can make a real non-server mobo with some actual physical IO (extra pcie 5 switch/bifurcation magic?) for the niche markets.
I base it on using pcpartpicker to look for modern motherboards (last 2-3 chipset generations) with more than 6 sata ports or more than 3 nvme m.2 slots . Results are few and far between, and never together. And if they are when you look at the motherboard errata they often disable 1 of the m.2 nvme when the second GPU slot is populated, or an entire handful of the sata ports.
You can just buy an HP Z Workstation and you'll never fill up all those SSD slots. Plus SATA HBAs are $10/port so this seems like a weird hill upon which to die.
HP workstations are pretty locked down compared to a build it yourself desktop. Like, if some particular type of fan is not connected it won't boot, no way to disable it in BIOS/UEFI settings.
re: HBAs in general, yeah, I'll admit it's weird but I really don't like having to use external active controller cards for reading my storage. I just want my motherboard to do it to keep things simple.
All modern desktop motherboards have very limited expansion IO available compared to a similar class motherboard from a decade ago. Part of this is that all the IO protocols now are so fast you can't just have 8x nvme storage hook-ups (like you'd have 8x sata in the past) in the space of a modern board's controller chip(s) and the CPU. IO has grown faster than processing. And sharing pcie with GPUs makes this even worse.
The market has changed and desktop PCs assembled by humans with the expectation of adding new parts later is relatively smaller. And a smaller consideration is given to them versus the big (server/mobile) markets needs for pcie. This probably won't change but I think an article pointing it out as a bad thing for desktop computers is welcome. Maybe some high end mobo manufacturer (Asus?) can make a real non-server mobo with some actual physical IO (extra pcie 5 switch/bifurcation magic?) for the niche markets.