Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. A user equipment (UE) may support efficient techniques for a capability based solution for handling an out-of-order operation for processing multiple downlink channels. In some cases, the UE may indicate, to a base station, a number of processing units needed to support a given priority class of communications with the base station, a maximum possible data rate per priority class of communications, or different numbers of component carriers (e.g., and a number of layers) that can be used for each priority class of communications. The base station may then configure the UE to receive and/or transmit channels of different priority classes based on the indication to not exceed the number of processing units, the maximum data rate, the number of component carriers, etc. for a corresponding priority class.