Asus Rog Strix X299 E Gaming

The Asus ROG Strix X299-E Gaming is an ATX motherboard with all features you would like to expect for your a gaming machine. This summer Intel has launched it’s “Skylake-X” and “Kaby Lake-X” processors under their new Core X-Series. And the big Motherboard giant Asus already in the market with several new boards features the Intel X299 chipset required to run a Core X-Series CPU. The ROG Strix X299-E Gaming is one of those and available online at INR 30,500.

Design & Features: Asus motherboards generally have black and very tough look like some armour. The ROG Strix X299-E Gaming motherboard comes in dark color accented by sharp angles and plenty of metal. The ROG Strix X299-E Gaming has several heatsinks and metal-braced PCI Express slots and looks like some alien machine due to RGD LEDs situated on the board under the cover of the I/O-port. The LGA 2066 CPU socket is the new Intel socket for their Core X-Series processors and is flanked between the 8 RAM slots.

The X299 chipset supports up to quad-channel memory configurations. In the dual-channel mode, the slots accept up to 64GB of DDR-4133 memory. Quad-channel supports the max capacity to 128GB and also support DDR-4133 modules.

The interesting thing about the ROG Strix X299-E motherboard is that it has two M.2 connectors. One of the connectors sits near the lower PCI Express x16 slots and another one is on the right side of the RAM slots. The typical M.2 slot near the RAM easy to access as compared to the slot just below the top PCI Express slot, which can be hard to reach once the video card is installed.

Ports & Accessories: The ROG Strix X299-E Gaming’s rear I/O panel is clean and uncluttered. It features USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port, USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A port, two USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, WiFi and Bluetooth connector, multichannel audio ports, one USB “BIOS Flashback” port, which lets you update the BIOS without even booting the PC. Put a BIOS update on a flash drive, plug it into the BIOS Flashback port, and press the BIOS button given the top of the panel for three seconds to update the BIOS.

Asus loaded the board with seven fan connectors, including one for the pump fan for your CPU cooler and another that can handle a second water pump.

The ROG Strix X299-E Gaming ships with an RGB-light-strip extension cable, fan holder for supplemental M.2-module cooling, four SATA cables, extension cable for the addressable LED header, slick Wi-Fi antenna and common documentation and stuffs.

Marvellous performance: We set up the prime motherboard using an Intel Core i7-7740X Core X-Series 4.30 GHz processor into the LGA 2066 socket and then attached a Corsair Hydro H60 liquid cooler along 32 GB Zion DDR4 SDRAM, 4GB AMD RADEON RX 570 GPU and Intel Optane 32 GB M.2 SSD.

We used the PC for more than two weeks to check its real-life performance while using it for day-to-day tasks. We ran multiple applications including MS office and browsed the internet. It managed them quite easily.

To go beyond, we ran two browsers, Chrome and Mozilla, with more than 20 tabs in each. Simultaneously, we operated MS office

KEY SPECS: 7th generation LGA2066 socket Intel Core X-Series processors, Dual M.2, front panel USB 3.1, Onboard 802.11AC WIFI and Intel Optane Memory compatibility, 5-Way Optimization with Auto-Tuning and FanXpert 4 automatically tailors overclocking profiles, Patent-pending SafeSlot (3X) feature an injection molding process, ASUS exclusive AURA Sync RGB lighting, three additional RGB headers, and 3D-printing mounts to customize your build, 8-channel HD audio, 3x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type A; 1x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C, ThunderboltEX 3 card included

PROS: Quad channel Ram Module, Asus Aura Sync, Intel Optane compatibility, Performance, Lots storage option, Feature rich BIOS

CONS: None and some other applications. We were able to switch between apps without any performance issues.

Using the BIOS we did simple tweaks to check over-clocking capability. It was able to achieve 4.50 GHz and performance was steady. Though the overclocking generated the significant amount of heat but our liquid cooler handle it easily. We installed different games including Shadow of Mordor, Thief, NFS etc. to check its gaming performance. It handled them easily. Graphics and overall performance were great. We didn’t notice any visible lag in the performance during the test. Moreover, we left one game running at the back and played another one. Still, there was no delay in the performance. Bottomline: The ROG Strix X299-E Gaming lacks a U.2 connector which can be seen in high-end motherboards. But this is not a big deal when two M.2 slots are present on the motherboard. The board has plenty of other fast storage features, including the VROC support and two M.2 connectors. The ROG Strix X299-E Gaming is targeted exclusively at gamers and we think it delivers a very solid foundation for a Core X-Series gaming PC.