Moving farther east and we are met by eight SATA 6Gb/s ports. To the right of this PCIe slot configuration is the X570 chipset with its active cooling. Lastly, there are two x1 slots that are PCIe Gen 4.0 but cap out at x1. There's a third x16 slot at the bottom, which is also PCIe Gen 4.0 but is capped at x4. Two are x16 that operate at PCIe Gen 4.0 speeds at x16/x0 or x8/x8 if both are in use. This board also has five PCIe slots out in the open.

This wouldn't be an issue, but ASUS decided to cover these two plates with a shroud that also hides the chipset and its cooling fan, which needs to be removed before installing or removing an M.2 SSD. There are two M.2 slots on the ASUS ROG Strix X570-E Gaming, which can be found below metal plates that also act as heatsinks (PCIe 4.0 SSDs can get a little toasty). You'll have no trouble powering an overclocked AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU with this motherboard. A single chassis fan header is located just beneath this AM4 socket. This is flanked by the beefy 16-phase design for power delivery with equally large heatsinks that actually make contact with the voltage regulator modules (VRM). To the left of the DIMM slots is the usual spot for the AM4 socket. Next to these slots is the 24-pin ATX power connection for the motherboard and the single USB-C port for the front panel, if your PC case supports this (see our best PC cases guide for some that do!). Working down the side and you'll be met with four DDR4 DIMM slots, allowing for a capacity of 128GB of RAM at up to 4400MHz (populate slots A2 and B2 first, by the way). To complete the top portion of the motherboard are three fan headers for CPU and AIO coolers, as well as the first of three available RGB headers. Only the single 8-pin is required with the additional 4-pin connection reserved for extreme overclocking.

Starting from the top-left and working our way across the main PCB, first up is the 8+4-pin ATX connections for supplying power to the CPU. Though if you plan on using the best in terms of storage, it's recommended to go with two M.2 SSDs over SATA connections. Inside the box with the motherboard itself is a manual, the necessary ASUS Wi-Fi components, and some cables to get you started with a PC build. The printed circuit board (PCB) is black, as we've come to know (and appreciate) from motherboard manufacturers. With AMD X570, ASUS added plenty of ports, headers, and connections for top-tier hardware.

Asus x570 chipset fan control