My core point is that whatever is involved, it's also involved in $2 aliexpress hubs with probably $.50 chips. If a computer costs more than $20 it can afford

My core point is that whatever is involved, it's also involved in $2 aliexpress hubs with probably $.50 chips. If a computer costs more than $20 it can afford to have PCIe lanes. If there's lockin because they're stuck using particular chips, that makes sense. But it's not because there's particular difficulty in dealing with the signal rates of PCIe 3 or at least 2.