Right, and I was saying populate that with any of the many available PCIe m.2 expanders
https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Converter-Expansion-Protocol-Equipment/dp/B0C2NG1X7X
https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-advanced-solution-Controller-Expansion/dp/B07JKH5VTL
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-M-2-Supports-Platform-Functions/dp/B0CKH9FWRQ
Then you have all m.2 on the mobo and PCIe card to populate as you wish with SSDs or other m.2 devices.
Physically the m.2 NIC may be too tall for the PCIe space provided in the HL8?, so you might need to put that on the mobo and move one of your WD Black NVMe drives to the PCIe card.
The BIOS manual for your mobo suggests there should be some bifurcation options available, but it doesn’t give any details. If it doesn’t support bifurcation, you need to use a switch based card like the QNAP.
