Yes, I am in the middle of an upgrade & trying to make through this confusion of which path is most cost effective (minimalizing) for my storage & other needs. And as of now, I have a add in PCI 4 port Rosewill RC 209 SATA RAID card that takes up a 3rd slot.
Don't ask y I am using a add in NIC card, believe me, its a necessity. I must have atleast 2 PCI slots open for a NIC card & Sound Card.
Msi z97 gaming 7 intel z97 Pc#
MSI Z97-S Intel Z97 Desktop Gaming PC Motherboard DDR3 M.2 Support i3 i5 i7 CPU HDMI SATA3 USB3.0 PCI-E 3.0 X16 Slot. Core i5-4690K Intel 100 Bench 78, 244,605 samples. MSI Z97-G Intel Z97 Desktop PC Motherboard DDR3 PCI-E 3.0 X16 VGA HDMI USB3.0 SATA3 Core i7 i5 i3 Cpus.