holy shit the M.2 to PCIe adaptor actually works super well!! I have both the 8x SATA expansion card and a GPU in the server now!!

Cable Management Is My Passion

Cables Managed, if you can't see them they're not there right?

apparently the SATA card didn't have proprietary connectors, but something called Mini-SAS SFF-8087 (to 4x SATA). They're 100cm long so waay longer than needs to be here, so ordered a 50cm version on aliexpress