The Asus X99-M WS uses the Intel Socket 2011-3 / R3 / LGA2011-3 CPU socket. Any compatible Intel 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 64 GB RAM.

Released on 31 Jul 2015, the Asus X99-M WS is now over 5 years old, which means it is extremely out of date and is based on very aged technologies. This motherboard will be dwarfed in performance by its modern counterparts, and will likely have very little support from Asus.

The Micro-ATX Asus X99-M WS should fit into all ATX cases, but its smaller size allows you to downsize your system build as a whole. Its size comes at the cost of features, so there are likely to be far fewer connections and expansion options available than in a larger motherboard.

The Asus X99-M WS has 8 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 X99-M WS 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 3 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 v3.0, 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 X99-M WS's PCIe v3.0. The Asus X99-M WS supports up to 2 Nvidia SLI connected graphics cards or up to 2 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 X99-M WS has 4 USB 2.0 slots and 7 USB 3.0 slots. USB 3.0 slots are theoretically capable of data transfer speeds of up to 5 Gbit/s, which is over 10 times faster than the USB 2.0 top speed of 480 Mbit/s. Although USB 2.0 slots alone currently serve as well as ever, an upgrade would better future-proof your system as more USB 3.0 compatible peripherals emerge. USB 3.0 is also backwards compatible with USB 2.0, which means you do not even have to use the newer slot functionality if you do not wish to.