There are rumors that RTX 4060 might be 5.0 with x8 lanes, so having 4.0 slot would limit it to x8 4.0 speeds for a GPU roughly the 3070 speed. So IMHO, single x16 5.0 and single M.2 5.0 is way to go. Optionally splitting those x16 lanes to 2x x8 as will probably happen with this STRIX board. As for other SSDs, cheaper boards will be fine with 2 M.2 slots (5.0+4.0), both are great, and having "slow" M.2 storage SSD at 4.0 will even be an overkill. I doubt anyone will do 3.0 for drives, though it would be enough for second drive. Anyway, sorry for bumping old thread, just wanted to point to new info and why 5.0 graphics card slots may be useful after all. You can also bet that something like RTX 5060/5050 will be 5.0 x8 as well, so upgrading lower end system could get bottlenecks.