Cases in the traditional "desktop" flat style have vertical GPU mounts for free. It's interesting that there's very little activity in that sector now, for fullsize motherboard support, especially since we've decided we no longer need to design a case around drive bays.
I do think the PCI-E to M.2 migration is getting a bit silly. My current mainboard has six M.2 slots, with four different levels of feature support (one intended for the preinstalled Wi-fi, one that can be SATA or PCI-E 3.0 x2, three PCI-e 4.0,4 one 5.0x4) Yet, if I said "I want a SCSI or SAS card", no dice, because there's only two x1 slots, and most cards seem to be x4.
The four-slot GPU problem might be more manageable if GPUs with AIO liquid coolerss included became more of a norm. That would at least let you move the majority of the bulk of the cooler away from the slot area. But usually this is reserved for ultra-expensive enthusiast cards.
I do think the PCI-E to M.2 migration is getting a bit silly. My current mainboard has six M.2 slots, with four different levels of feature support (one intended for the preinstalled Wi-fi, one that can be SATA or PCI-E 3.0 x2, three PCI-e 4.0,4 one 5.0x4) Yet, if I said "I want a SCSI or SAS card", no dice, because there's only two x1 slots, and most cards seem to be x4.
The four-slot GPU problem might be more manageable if GPUs with AIO liquid coolerss included became more of a norm. That would at least let you move the majority of the bulk of the cooler away from the slot area. But usually this is reserved for ultra-expensive enthusiast cards.