Why do I need all those PCI slots in my gaming rig?

Hello good people,

today a post about your rigs. Have you ever wondered why there are some many PCI slots on your board? Or in particular, why are they always unoccupied in so many gaming rigs? This is something I want to make a small post today.

Image Source: here

1. The Origin

Well, that is easy. Back in the days all electonics where bigger and therefore the mainboard wasn't packed with tons of features. The mainboard was the board that just connected all the componets of the PC but did not has that much features on its own. This means that

you needed a dedicated/multiple network cards for getting your computer into the internet,
you needed a dedicated soundcard to connect speakers or headphones,
you needed (later) a dedicated wifi/wlan card to get internet wireless,
you needed a dedicated/multiple graphics cards to display anything. IGPUs were not common back in the days.
...
These where some reasons why you needed a lot of slots in your rig and why the ATX format and the big towers where very common back in the day.

2. Today

Today is different. The mainboard is more than just the connection of all PC parts. Nowadays it has all bnasic features you need, like a soundcard, network adapter, wireless adapter and a hdmi port for the IGPU (Altough neglected in every gaming rig for a reason :) ). But today you can easily go with one slot and pack your whole gaming rig in a small, easy to transport format. This rises the question...

3. Why is the ATX format still a thing in 2017?

Well there are a few reasons. First there are still guys that buy dedicated network and sound cards. But that is not the majority. Most gamers like to have dual GPU setups. And if you are not going the watercoolling route you have to make sure that there is space for aiflow between the two GPUs. This makes the ATX format quite popular. As a whole: Building a system with a lot of room for air is still very popular because of the overclocking mentality of gamers. Having a small system is nice, but it will limit your options to overclock. There is nothing that can give you more overclokcing potential in your system than space for the air to breath :). This is also a topic for cost. Having a large case reduces the need of a heafty cooler even if u are not going the overclocking route. At last, we are about to see a change in the drive market. Drives that are connected via the PCI lanes become more and more popular. This change will, imao, cause a majopr change in the case and PC build market. These drives need airflow as well but cancel out the space that we need for the hard drives. So in 5 years from I'm pretty sure that, except for NAS systems, we will no longer see hard drives. They will disappear similar to the CD/DVDF drives. These are the reasons why people in 2017 are still building ATX formfactor rigs.

What type of case do you have? Do yo also have many empty PCI slots? Why did you go with ATX? Have you done smth different? Would love some comments and resteems.