That's understandable. I was helping out a friend on his build a few years back who was dead set on ASRock, due to the price. After all the headaches I watched him deal with, I swore them off, too. I've had some builds with Asus and Gigabyte boards that are still alive and kicking (*knock on wood*), so I decided to give GB a shot this time around. Worst case, I'll just RMA it, or get a refund and buy a different board.
Looks like the x570 Strix-F and x570 Tuf have 8 sata ports, and you'd only lose two if you used both M2 slots.
At least, that's what's listed on that spreadsheet someone on overclock.net made indicates.
Caught a Buildzoid video last night, and he was pushing the sub-$300 x570 boards pretty hard, saying they were really good. If that aorus master sucks or is DOA, I'll switch to one of those instead.