The Asus ROG Strix X399-E Gaming uses the AMD Socket TR4 CPU socket. Any compatible AMD CPU will have the same socket entry. It uses the DDR4 memory type, with maximum speeds of up to 3200 MHz, and 0 DDR4 slots allowing for a maximum total of 128 GB RAM.

The E-ATX Asus ROG Strix X399-E Gaming uses a less common standard than the traditional ATX you most often see. As such, you should be wary of its compatibility with other cases, as well as the compatibility of PSUs with the case you choose.

The Asus ROG Strix X399-E Gaming has 6 SATA 3.0 hard drive slots. These allow for theoretical data transfer speeds of up to 6GB/s, as opposed to the 3GB/s of SATA 2.0. Generally speaking, only high performance hard drives, specifically solid-state drives, will be able to take advantage of the bandwidth potential of SATA 3.0 ports, though it is backwards compatible, so you do not have to take advantage.

The Asus ROG Strix X399-E Gaming does not support onboard graphics. Any system build that uses this motherboard therefore requires a separate graphics card, or a processor that has a GPU on the same die, such as AMD APU processors. There are 4 PCIe x16 slots on this motherboard. This means it is perfectly capable of accommodating the latest graphics cards, although it is important to try and use a graphics card with the same graphics card interface of PCIe v4.0, as anything below will not reach the motherboard's potential, and anything above will have its performance slashed to the bandwidth maximum of the Asus ROG Strix X399-E Gaming's PCIe v4.0. The Asus ROG Strix X399-E Gaming supports up to 4 Nvidia SLI connected graphics cards or up to 4 AMD Crossfire connected graphics cards for improved overall graphical performance at the cost of multiplied graphics-based power consumption as well as the price of the cards themselves.

The Asus ROG Strix X399-E Gaming has 2 USB 2.0 slots but no USB 3.0 slots. While USB 3.0 slots are so far by no means necessary, and with a plethora of USB 2.0 peripherals to choose from, the USB functionality on this motherboard should be fine. With so few slots, however, you would have to use a USB expansion hub. As such, we would highly recommend a different motherboard, preferably with USB 3.0 functionality as well.