I know your pain, Tree. I have a MicroATX-board with an oversized graphics card, all squeezed into a tiny case. Still, I don't want to miss my x-fi for the world. And since there are many options for fitting such cards, I'd still find a solution. It doesn't need a PCIe2.0 x16 bus to benefit from a soundcard. Normal PCI or the MiniPCI does fine.
And if all goes wrong, I'd still prefer am X-FI-USB solution over the onboard chip.
